Flowers and Candles

I am back and yes it works, whatever the bottle says it's true. I have classic magazine hair. No I'm not telling which brand this is, because I'm a selfish spoilt brat and I don't share. I'm not sharing my hair treatment, which would only be available by copious amounts of products in a very expensive hair salon. I got this for a tiny amount out of the bottle which only costs a little less than 5 Euro. Look for it yourself. I've been through products like water, and at 35 I discover that it needn't cost the earth. I wish I'd known before, I would have been able to pay my car licence easily by now. But what can I do, I wouldn't be very good at being a financial controller although at the same time I make the economy boom. Oh and the smell, it's heavenly, I smell just as if I've spent a week in the Caribbean sipping the sun and non alcoholic cocktails all day. And I still got change out of a 5 Euro note. It's making me feel so smug. But then again, I remember, it's a little bit than an hour to go, and I'll be safely out of territorial sadness waters. Come one second after midnight I'll be all right. I know, I know one second shouldn't make that big a difference, but alas, it does. So here I am, with red carpet-style hair, an old sweater and jogger pants. I have just an hour to ramble on some more. Sometimes we experience big events in life. We get married, we have babies, all big turning points because they turn our lives around. I suppose, in a happy way. I don't know, I wouldn't know. And very very rarely we experience other 'event's in life which are breath-taking, life changing and not in a happy way. And we live the experience because we have no choice. It's happened to me, and I've always wondered, why me? Do I need feng shui, is it karma, is it me being very stupid, and is it me thinking that love changed everything? That much is true, love changes everything, sometimes not in a good way. It's not about cheating partners, that is so easy to face. It's not like the first kiss turned wrong because I absolutely had no idea how to do it right (I know now). It's not as if a love of my life being brazen enough to go off with my best friend. That is nothing. It's about a big big love, a happy happy life, joyful joyful years, when suddenly something or someone presses Delete with massive vengeance. And suddenly it's gone all dark and not because Enemalta has done some silly trick. So you try the cell phone a million times because the only way to hear that big love is through his answering machine which is not even there anymore after a few days. And it's about carefully sealing his pillow in plastic for his smell not to go away. And about looking at his possessions in dismay, about sifting through his clothes and throwing them all away. And about poignantly looking at the freshly laundered clothes which will be worn no more. About not being able to breathe anymore because you don't think you can go on. And about flowers, because the only way to say something is to really say it with flowers. So many flowers arranged in an array of all sorts. And about lighting candles. Until finally it's time to buy yourself an orchid and light a candle for yourself. And there's no more cold marble, because the sun is finally out and you owe it to yourself to slowly go back to the amazing thing called life. And you find that flowers are suddenly pretty, and candles do not flicker anymore, but instead start glowing. And the sun is warm, and suddenly life is beckoning once more. And everything becomes alive. Because life is for living.

Hairy

I come here looking like some sort of Indian with a huge turban. I've decided that pampering never broke anybody's bones so I've just treated my hair to a beautiful smelling treatment, which, if what it says on the bottle is true, will get me shiny hair. So while I wait for this potion to work overtime, I've come here to do some more talking. Now I know why mankind invented perfume and scent, and why just a 30ml costs the earth, and why no matter how much it costs I'll always go for the 100ml thank you very much (big hint). My mood of the day seems to have a lot to do with my olfactory nerves. I shy away from sweet, overpowering scents like Dior's Poison, but then I love Dior's J'Adore. At the same time I will kill for what is to me the best perfume ever concocted, Issey Myake Eau D'Issey. Beautifullllll. As is Clinique Happy but not Happy to be. All right I guess I've dropped enough hints now. Back to the hair. I think hair is a fab thing to have. I don't know what I'd do if some horrible witch came in the middle of the night and chopped it off. I'd track her down and burn her at the stake with no qualms about it. I like hair because it grows effortlessly long into a mane which hides my imperfections. There is one downside; it takes ages to wash waist-long hair and ages to dry it. But since I've met Nigel, it's been simpler. He does the whole works in record time. What takes a whole hour for me takes half of that for him. I've always had a thing for hair, better still we've always had a thing for hair, that's me and my twin. I remember the tears when he cut off his beautiful long hair because it wasn't very appropriate for court purposes. I still have that hair, stacked away into a beautiful box. But I don't tell him that, otherwise he'd be knocking on the door every free moment he had. My twin is one man who will not be taking gracefully to a receding hairline, although it's about to start any minute now. Poor Joseph. My Mister, on the other hand is so over the moon that he has no hair to worry about. Talk about opposites. And I? Well it's time up for my treatment, hopefully I'll be back with luxurious locks.

They said I would smile...

I have 5 hours more to go. And then it will be really over. It's been a quiet day today, although I'm not sure that that has helped. I have gone over a lot of my writings during the 8th year ago. 8 years ago today I was reeling in shock. And I was acting so sensibly as if I'd just had fallen (as usual) and grazed my knee a little bit. Or as if I just had a mild headache. Or perhaps as if I were nursing a cold. Or perhaps again as if I'd just had had my foot amputated. Amputation meant nothing back then in comparison. The truth was I'd had my heart ripped, my brain smashed, and my very existence taken apart with a bomb. And at that moment, I just plodded on as if nothing happened. I just wasn't ready to face what I had seen. Very few people see what I have, and I'm glad. I wish nobody would see it anymore because it rocks you to the core. And I thought my life was in pieces, which it was. But I thought life would never be the same again, which it hasn't. It's ok now, not the same, but still ok although very different. And although I had always dutifully payed my taxes, there was no help for me. There must have been every kind of help, except for me. There still is every kind of help except for people like me. It's the reason why I get so sad when I hear about something like that. And people can be so insensitively morbid that they actually smile.

So there was I, a broken person screaming for help inside. A broken little girl who suddenly became very frightened and would retire to the corner with a cushion instead of a teddy; still a frightened little girl nonetheless. And I'd surf the Internet for help. And it's a good thing I did, because out there were people like me. Victims of a horrible thing, but victims turned survivors. And they said I would smile again, laugh again, which seemed mad. There was no way laughter would ever be part of my normal everyday life, because back then my life didn't look as if it were about to return to normal any day soon. I called 179, and I could feel their sympathy together with their helplessness. I was so at my wit's end that I even turned to priests who were as unhelpful as they could get, shame on them. I turned to books, it was also useless. I went to psychologists who got afraid of me, I did the tour-de-shrinks who seemed to know nothing, they said I was ok, I didn't need help, I was so eloquent, I would make it. As if that helped. I knew I was never sick in the mind, I just wanted someone to hold my hand and say it was so normal. So I turned back to the Internet, and surfed and browsed. And since it was made clear that I was on my own, I did the only thing which I could do. I starting writing, writing and writing. And I think I wrote volumes by all the stuff in my computer. And I have read them again and now see hope coming in a little bit each day, although back then it was all so black. But I needed to talk, even if it were to myself. I needed to talk, talk, talk to get close to acceptance and let the healing start. And I was so angry, at God, at the system, at the whole blue marble. And I cried, cried, cried, I cried so much that my eyes finally hurt and there were no more tears. There is such a physical state where your eyes sting a lot and the tear-tank is exhausted. And finally came acceptance and I started making baby steps toward the road to recovery. Do not feel sorry for me, I have felt sorry enough. Do not be afraid, I did nothing wrong except walk onto something horrific. But the people on the Internet said I would smile again. And although I thought they were mad, I really have smiled again, a million smiles, a million laughs. The past is the past and it will always be with me, but I chose not to drown myself and stall, I chose to bounce back to life. I worked my butt off (even if it doesn't seem like it), but I did, and today I smile again. Real smiles.

Car Licence Shock

Ok that was my parents not understanding at all today. Because I got pissed off at the my car licence which has tripled. Nice one flimkien kollox possibbli, of course it's possible if the government keeps raiding my bank account like this. Enemalta bill, now car licence. And it'll be something else very soon I suppose. This cannot go on, but of course it's my fault. That is what my dad thinks; Because I shouldn't have gone out during the sales. Next thing, I'm going housebound, but then housebound also has its toll on my utility bills. Oh God I can never win this situation. One good thing, I shot a dirty look at my mum and told her today just wasn't the day to pick at me for giving the sales a shot. I think she got it. My dad, on the other hand, still thinks that flimkien kollox possibbli, so I just closed my ears. I don't need lectures about how good the government is. I have had enough of this shit. I pay some 500 Euro each month in tax, then when I need something out of the public funds I get nothing. This is just shit. I waited for four hours at Mater Dei just for an X-ray of my miserable foot, and I could see temperatures rising. And I don't blame them. The average wait is 7 hours. And if it's an average then it means it could be longer. Come on. I didn't wait long in Tunisia, I was out in less than an hour. So that'll be another 200 Euro in car licence. Then they're warning us about scams all over the place, while we're getting scammed in home sweet home.

8 years

I've gone easy on myself today. Because somehow if I turn it into a very sordid way, it's an 8th birthday. And birthdays are for fun. And joy. But there is a fine line between the opposites of everything. A fine line between joy and agony, between sadness and happiness. And although I'm sure that going to my parents' house today is not a very good idea, I'm standing up proud and going anyway. It's not my fault that it's an 8th. birthday. It's not my fault that they do not understand. And it's not my fault that I have a baggage which consists of an 8th. birthday. They're perfect, well, somewhere along the genetic stupidity I came out to be not perfect. I could never stop the things happening in the world, in the same manner as I couldn't stop things happening in my immediate world. I have been made to feel sorry, but now that my mind has cleared I realise I shouldn't have been sorry. That was cruel. Just an added burden on pain-stricken me. That wasn't very fair. But perhaps it made me grow super-fast. Not in physical size. Although perhaps it has too, but that doesn't matter right now, it didn't then. I remember thinking, weight loss was such an imbecile issue, everything was an imbecile issue next to anything. Sometimes fate is bitter. And sometimes babies come into the world with a black cloud over them perhaps, although the black cloud isn't seen because of the joy of a new little thing into the world. Perhaps if I'd come with instructions, they'd have flushed me away. Although I'm not so sure that my parents, with all their not understanding would have done that. But perhaps when you push nature, then fate takes over. Although that's not a very fair statement either, because it shows a little of the bitterness there still is in me. And I don't like it. And now I also suddenly realise why I keep the extremely low-profile, why I avoid people as much as possible. And no I'm not mad, nor depressed. Just a wee bit sad, and I hope that I have a right to feel that way. True it's been 8 years now, and so much has changed. I'm not the scared little girl anymore. I guess I'm still a little-bit-scared-woman now. I have a whole new life now, and life is good. I never would have believed that somehow I'd carve out another life, but I have. And I guess that is something, 8 years down the line.