Photos saved my life

There are times in life when you just need to pull the quilt over your head, keep yourself company and just remember to breathe in and out at a fairly regular pace. And that is where I have been, under my metaphorical quilt.

It is so long since I read another blog, it seems so strange to start again, I am reluctant to do it. I feel like I have snuck into a bedroom and felt under the mattress for a diary and am now holding one in my hand, deciding if it is good to open it and peek inside. I want to read them, to see how everyone is, and yet something holds me back. It been like leaving a phone call to a friend just that bit too long, each day you leave it, the harder it gets. And so you put it off one more day. I thought by writing maybe it would get me back to that place again, a sort of "Quid pro quo" somewhere in my mind. I hope so, because  I have missed reading , missed being a part of blog land and I have missed the friends I have made here.


The typhoid knocked me for six, but I have won.

The rest of my life has been slowly unraveling, piece by little piece, and I feel like I am holding wet worms, trying to keep them in my hands and failing miserably.

I know there is nothing I can do about any of it, but I have just  ended up feeling so powerless and helpless. I know I am not, but it has taken some work to  convince myself of what is the reality.

"The man" is still there in the back ground. He has told me that the baby looks like she is  suffering from Spina Bifida, no sight in one eye and delay in growth. The poor little thing, I feel so sorry that any baby has to go through this, that another mother has to suffer the worry and anguish that all of these challenges bring with them. I feel sorry for him too as the father. Not the same sense of sorrow , but I do feel for him.

He has been back in hospital, he has had more headaches and has had a shunt put it. I try not to ask, not to question, not to appear that I care, but I do. I cant help it. He is there buried deep in my soul, he will never go away.  He is making a good recovery though.

I didnt want to fill this first space with woe and misery, and although it seems like it, I don't think I have really.

My father has left my mother. They have been married 52 yeas and 10 months . She ranted and raved as only  the drunken can. She called my sister and told her to fetch him, she didn't want him any more.

So my sister arrived to find a small thin man sitting by the front door with a suitcase, looking lost and sad, and so relieved to be leaving. My sister used to be the most opinionated, self centered, self absorbed , intolerant person I knew. Over the years she has mellowed somewhat, and now? Well...all I can say is ...she is amazing. She has always been efficient, but OMG , she has got things done. My dad is nice and safely tucked up in her house with her and my brother in law. They have sorted out so much together. My dad is happy, 10lbs heavier than when he arrived, a lot less stressed, the dementia is still there, and slowly getting worse, but he is less stressed, now he no longer lives with a drunken bitch from hell, he is no longer belittled, no longer afraid, no longer ridiculed, no longer is he the tragedy of her hate, her bitterness and her missiles, and her fists.
She got her way, but now.....

 Now she is demanding him back, like some toy she has changed her mind about. He refuses to go. He is staying put. He no longer wants to be with her.

I thought I should be sad about this. I am not sad at all. I am relieved. I am glad it is all over for him, that he is free, that he longer feels bound to her by honour, by his upbringing, but convention, by his sense of duty. Maybe the dementia has stripped him of that layer of duty that was embedded deep within his psyche from his upbringing.

It saddens me that he does not have the woman he chose to spend his life with looking after him, sharing their lives together, but it does not make me sad. The sense of relief I feel far outweighs anything else.

I have spent lots of time skyping him, he has talked endlessly about things he has kept close to his chest for years. he has talked about his childhood, about his life, about things he shouldn't tell me, but the passage of time probably means its ok to talk. He appologised for sending me away to school before I was nine..his words were...."I am sorry I had to send you, the alternative so so much worse, I knew you hated it, but at least you were safe when I was away so much".

If ever there was an expression of love..............as he said those words I saw it, the difficult decision he had made has weighed heavy on his heart all these years. I always knew that he loved me, I have always felt loved by him, but i don't think I ever realised how much he loved me.

And now be have to sort out the mess of selling houses, moving, etc etc, and all this from far away land. I will have to go back and sort it out, but when I am not sure.

And as for all the other stuff? I am not sure.

There are time when i have willed myself not to contact 'the man", where i have fought against it, when I have need his strength, his level headedness, his wisdom.  I have fought against needing him, and I have won. I don't tell him, I don't ask.

I know if I did he would help, but I am strong,  and levelheaded and wise too, and I can do this.

I am not one half of a whole, I am a whole entity in myself.

There are nights when I feel so alone, I long to hear his voice, to see his face, but they are less.

There has been one upside of all of this, I have once again connected with my camera, and the pleasure I am getting from this is wonderful. A sense of achievement, of learning, of progress, and i have sold some photos.............I am so very happy and pleased with myself. So that is my little silver lining in all of this. So here is one to show you.