Lump of Love

A person read my blog and told me it was sad. I know it has been but it hasn't always been that way. So I made a decison to combat happy with not so happy. And recently I have been thinking about love and the love we have for different people. So if I'm thinking about it, why not blog about it.

I'm not talking about family love or friend love, I'm talking slushy, gooey, attraction type love. And I think I don't subscribe to the 'you only get one love' theory. I think you get a few who prepare you for future loves. I believe that you get different people to love, to guide you to your heart. Because if I look back, I have loved more than one person. I've been falling in love for quite some time. And while, I wouldn't call every one of them epic loves, they are people I've envisaged a future with. You know played the 'what if' game.

My first love was in my humble opinion the one I've based every one who followed, against. Rightly or wrongly. In truth, with that wonderful thing called hindsight, I've probably been setting myself up for fall after fall because nothing ever compares to that first love. In my defence however, with that first love person, I've gone away and come back and fallen into a different kind of love with him over the years. With each beating of my heart, I've fallen differently because of the previous loves. I've grown more cautious with my lump of love.

He's special to me and will remain so because he was my first love. When I believed in happy ever afters and  love conquering all boundaries. It doesn't. Love requires a ton of work and an acceptance that life doesn't run smoothly just because there is love. So he is special to me. I don't think I am to him but then men and woman are so very different in this regard.

I can move onto my little loves. People I loved for a season or three - but because of timing and circumstances didn't work out. Not in a bad way. It just didn't happen for us. I still remember them fondly and am grateful that they showed me their souls.

Do I regret any of the men I fell in love with? Only one. And not the one everyone assumes I do. The one I regret is the one that changed me completely - and I didn't want to be changed. The one I stuck out for 3 years because I didn't know what else to do. The one who ruined me really. Physically and mentally. And it was only last night when I was talking to MooMoo that I realised that I've pretty much blocked out those years. That I don't talk about him, I don't talk about how I loved him and how much I hated myself. I look back and I don't recognise myself - it doesn't compute to who I was before and after. It's like that person was a friend I should have kicked into shape. Luckily my mother did. My mom saved me of that I have no doubt. And I'll be eternally grateful, as I was able to move on, meet the father of CG and have the most beautiful child a person could have.

Am I ready to love another - this is the question I routinely ask myself. I don't even know if I want to. I'm quite happy plodding along. But I do get a little twinge, when I realise I'm going to my high school reunion with nobody by my side as my significant other. Why does that bother me so much? Maybe because the majority have done that side of life successfully - and we all like to be seen as doing the 'normal' thing?

arggh

Today is a shit day. Not ashamed to admit it. Today I'm full of feeling sorry for myself and hurting and wanting to scream into the wind. If it wasn't so stupid cold, I'd take myself down to the beachfront, stand in front of the crashing waves and just shout and scream and be wild. I might even make it into the local newspaper.

Today I feel so alone. I think I just want a hug and that's been bugging me for a few days now. I realised that no one has given me a hug - besides my family. Banana did the week before Nhandi went when I had taken a call from my second mother who had said we needed a miracle and it sunk in that maybe she wasn't going to make it. No one has held me while I've cried bar my mother - I laid on her lap and sobbed over the loss of Nhandi on the day she passed away. So in two months, not one of my friends has given me physical contact. Am I stinky? Do I give a vibe out that says 'no hugs allowed'? Am I unapproachable? Is it because Nhandi was 'just' my best friend? Well I can say now, that I've never felt so distraught, so consumed by grief in all my life. And I think to my mother who has lost two best friends and wonder how she coped? At the time, I didn't understand her grief, thought she was over doing it a bit. Unfortunately, now I get it. Now I understand why she was hysterical and totally out of it at their funerals.

Then I think back to 1990, when I had been in Port Elizabeth for about two months and wrote to Nhands and said "No one has hugged me" (we were all about the hugging in Cape Town) and the very next day someone did. And will I trot along to my reunion in 6 months time and will people think I've changed into a 'don't hug me' kind of person? Will they reckon I've changed for the worst?

I've pretty much always been a happy, social person. This has changed. I haven't been. I've secluded myself and locked up my zoominess - be that through fear of rejection, lack of opportunity or can't be arsed-ness, I'm just not sure. But I have lost my zing - I know that. I sit here and as I'm typing, I know that the minute I hit South Africa, I'll get it back. I'll be zingy and zany and be like that person I was.

So why am I not like it now? Hopefully, August will help me reclaim who I want to be.

The picture below is of a night myself, Nhands and Mouse laughed until we cried, spoke the hind leg of many donkeys and consumed more food and wine that was healthy. We shrieked like a gaggle of girls only can. It was a night I wish I could have more of. Strange to believe that was taken November 2001. Looks like it could have been taken yesterday.

First!

This is my first blog of 2013 and it's the 4th already. And I've not blogged because I've nothing to say, but rather; I'm not sure how to say it.
I want this post to be one I can look back on and say YES! That's what I did.
So goals for 2013:

Fly in a plane -

haha this is an easy one, I'm off to the country of my birth in August. I am just too excited for this trip. The excitement has been dampened quite a bit because I'm not sure how I'm going to adjust to the realisation of Nhandi not being in Cape Town. She has ALWAYS been in Cpt when I came to visit...ALWAYS. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have at least one melt down of hysterics. Just like I did in 2001, when I realised my granny was no longer with us - she died in 1998 yet I only got back to Cpt in 2001. I had done a pretty good job of separating England from South Africa, and I think I only truly realised her passing when I was sitting with my aunts, my mom and my Nana and there was Granny missing. That's going to be the same in August, there will be Mouse, LBW and me and no Nhandi and I don't think that's right. However, the trip will for me be about letting go. Letting go and also reconnecting with my future and my past and me. I can't wait to show CG everything that makes his mother the idiot that she is. I cannot wait to show him stupid things like where his granny fell over in the waves, the things his grandad built, the schools I went to.
And it's a mega school reunion...how awesome is it going to be to see all those people again? To reconnect with old friends and see how they have grown and forged forward. And hopefully, that's what I can do as well.

And so until August, I shall do all the overtime I can, in order that CG and I have an immense 3 weeks away from the life and grime of our normality!

What else for me in 2013? I shall become the mother of a 15 year old. And that in itself is a scary thing. 15....what an age. It is probably of no help to CG, that I remember so much about that age in myself. That I mark that year as the year that pretty much set out my future thoughts and dreams.