The beginning

Hello world.
Welcome to my blog.

Here I sit, with a cat curled up on my knee, and I ponder the universe.

Like many girls, a lot of my time is taken up with thinking about relationships. Sad I know, but let's face it, it is a bit of a cultural obsession, and anyone who says they don't think about it is quite frankly, lying through their teeth (or to themselves).

Why I did what I did...

Very recently I had an intense sexual experience which seems to have altered my consciousness and restarted my thinking about what it is that I want from my 'love' life. Just to fill you in, I have a relatively varied history when it comes to coupling, culminating in almost getting married in August 2006. That relationship ended after about 5 years because I left him, just three months before the big day. The relationship I went into almost straight away turned out to be (you guessed it) a bit of a 'rebound', although I still say to this day I would not have found the strength to leave my fiance if it hadn't happened the way it did. I still say that telling him it was over was the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but I have never once regretted it, not even for a minute because the day I walked out was the day I started to really live.

That makes me seem a little heartless doesn't it? Maybe that's what we have to be to survive sometimes. It's easy to look at the person who breaks the promises, who cheats, who lies, who leaves, and colour them the villain so that we can sit smugly back and say 'I would never do that', but the truth is we all would, because in many ways we are all the same. What the people who loved me could see was that when I broke his heart, I broke mine too and, I believe, saved us both from the torture of an unhappy union.

I certainly didn't know it then, but that fork in the road changed me forever, and I feel blessed that I woke up in time. I haven't ever regretted leaving, but I have wondered about, even mourned who I would have been if we had stayed together, and that is entirely different. Maybe I would have children now - maybe I would even want children? Because you see I never have. I look at the people around me and I truly see bringing babies into the world as a millstone around their necks. I know all the arguments, I do love children, and I know it sounds like I'm just saying this as an exercise in emotional self-preservation, but I can't help wondering how many willing parents are really just seeking to create another person to fill the void they feel in their hearts. In other words, to create another person whom they can love. I absolutely refuse to do that, now or ever.

We all have emotional pain. We all feel alone, because at the end of each day, when we close our eyes and turn out the light, when we think the last thoughts of the day, that's exactly what we are. Everything else is entirely transitory. The pain comes from running from that. Marianne Williamson says that the pain we feel is not due to the love that others withhold from us, but the love that we withhold from them. I fully believe that. I see so many people trying so hard to be happy by running from themselves, and I weep inside to see it because I know now that 'if we don't go within, we go without' (I borrowed that quote from CwG).

Over the last 12 months I have been single, and I have been travelling in another direction. I have been walking back to myself. I have been stripping away the illusions put forth by my ego and fuelled by fear, and now I am finallly starting to see who I am.

You find me standing in the sunshine and rubbing my eyes.
It is glorious and mesmerising, and I hope to share it with you.