To say the last nine years has flown is but a mere understatement. It feels, to a certain extent, as though they never happened. As if the memories were just implanted there by some twisted individual who just wanted to sit back and watch me squirm at the mere thought of them.

March 2001 I discovered Tinmanic. Inspired I began my own online blog, began a hobby which was to become an obsession and would, in its own way, lead to a completely different career. Good job really because, you know, that career in the equestrian industry was never going anywhere.

Through blogging I have met some of the most amazing people of my life. Some I lost some along the way, some remain in intermittent contact and a few precious individuals I am proud to regard as true friends.

I have had my trials over the course of the last few years, especially since relocating to a different country. I have felt lost and isolated in a country which, on the surface, is not unlike my own – yet, much deeper, is so completely alien. Monica touched on something in her recent post “Cultural differences and self  -protecting bullshit” that really struck a nerve with me, namely because she (once again) described something similar to my experiences – only this time it was in complete reverse. Unlike Monica, who moved from a tactile close country to a reserved one, I did exactly the opposite.

For all intents and purposes the people of the UK, with a few exceptions are far more reserved than many of their European counterparts. I did not really appreciate this until I actually went to live in one of these more exuberant countries – nor did I realise how uncomfortable it would make my life on occasion. I am, a fairly tactile person by normal English definition. I love kisses and hugs, I love being close to someone. I also enjoy my personal space and if I don´t know you, I´d rather you kept out of it without prior invitation. So you can imagine when moving to Spain where “dos besos” on greeting is the norm I was suddenly thrown into situations I found uncomfortable. Like Monica I rapidly began to feel isolated and alone, not because I lacked the hugs and kisses on greeting, but because I felt infringed upon and socially awkward – pretty soon I would avoid any form of social interaction because I felt so uncomfortable.

It passed. Now I can dos besos with the best of them. In fact I recently managed to upset some English friends because they decided I was “too familiar”, which made me chuckle.

We have such a wonderful diversity within Europe, and I do not believe we appreciate it enough. I had spent countless holidays abroad, and I didn´t realise how different each culture was until I was thrown in at the deep end of actually living there. A part of me adores living abroad, meeting people from other cultures – experiencing their world, their language…it challenges you to rethink so many things about yourself, your culture and the world around you.

I wish I had been able to access a computer during the first two years of living in Spain – at least more often. This was when I was confronted with the most challenges – lingustically and culturally. I would have loved to have shared these early experiences with you – but now it seems that time has past and they no longer are as fresh in my mind as they once were.

Nine years. Next year will be my tenth blogging anniversary. Amazing, an entire decade of writing absolute gibberish. Long may it continue.

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anaïs Nin

During the course of the last month my long awaited success in design has really started. I do not believe I will ever win any awards for my work but, for me, a happy client is more than enough justification for what I do. That and a decent enough pay cheque for which to pay my bills and my outstanding debts. The secret to my final success was signing up with ODesk and, although criticised by a great many of our so-called profressionals, it works for me.

But this post has already started to wander off in the direction not intended. This was never going to be an entry justifiying my obsession with ODesk. Well, you caught me, it has no real purpose. I just wanted to write something, anything, in my blog.

Yesterday, when I found out my site had been hacked, I felt violated. Intruded upon.  Sometime, during the course of the last week, someone stepped into personal space and used it for defrauding others. I cannot believe, as someone who works in this field, that I had left myself open to such an attack.

As a result of this attack I had to delete and reinstall everything. I finally transferred over the remnants of the old fembat unhinged – the bits I deemed marginally worthy of saving and deleted the rest. To be fair, not a great deal was saved. Shameful. The odd smattering of red links in nine years of black type.

Blogging has always been about connecting with others. A paradox for someone who, in real life at least, is actually fairly insular. I find it easier to communicate, to show my true colours as it were to people on the internet. I do not find it quite so easy in the outside world, not anymore. During the course of the last few years, at some point, I began to follow the family line. I can see it happening, bit further on I´ll be the mad old lady shunning the world in favour of cats, dogs and dinners for one.

Angry, Cynical? When did this happen to me?

I remember the girl that was. The giggling teen who was open and friendly, who had patience and understanding.

Where did she go? Why was she suddenly replaced with a cynical thirty-something who can no longer control her temper? Self involved?

A few months ago I declared I was going to start afresh. It hasn´t happened. But maybe it is time it did before I really do become that old woman who batters people with her walking stick.

I´ll just have to keep annoying Poe, Colin, Sarah and whoever else can stand the pain of a friend like me for a bit longer yet! Just for the record, you know I love you guys right? I just dont really understand why you like me!

</miseries>

I am breaking my code today. I am so tired of hearing about Valentines Day – the one day of year which features commercialised romance, wilting flowers and lack lustre performances of love and adoration.

For some.

This morning I awoke in my new apartment to the sharp reminder as to why I am still single. Do you know what that sound was?

A women begging her partner to leave her alone. Screaming. Shouting. The tell tale signs of Domestic Violence.

I´ve been there. My mothers been there.

When all fell eeringly quiet but for the faint sobbing of a broken woman I felt a selfish sense of relief. The memories of my own experiences eased and I could begin work. During the course of the day my feelings of guilt crept into the limelight, the selfish betrayal of another woman in need. Two years ago that could have been me. Forty years ago that could have been my mother.

Happy Valentines Day. I´ll stick to my small box apartment, eat my Pizza and watch my movie.

Its like beginning to write or draw on a fresh piece of paper or cracking open that brand new notepad or journal for the first time.

When I decided to return to Wordpress after several years of Expression Engine I planned to transfer over all the old entries. Eight years of them to be exact. But the archives never were transferred over. I wrote the module. I tested it once to confirm it works succesfully and then, after all that work, I selected the content and clicked delete. All gone. Every last one.

It was immensely liberating.

You see, after all I have been through this last eight years, the deletion of the old in order to begin afresh was symbolic. I was tired of the constant flicking back to remind myself of what had been – the good and the bad. The old entries, interesting as some were, held me in a past from which there seemed no escape. My writers muse was blocked by eight years of complete and utter gibberish.

I wanted a fresh slate.

So I didnt wipe the old slate clean, I smashed the damn thing. Not only here but in my personal life. I´ve clung to the past too damn long and now I intend to begin anew. I´ve wallowed in guilt, relied too heavily on others, and I have hidden away from life.

Its time to take a fresh approach to writing, to blogging, and most important of all, to life.

Discovered a chat site for the blogathon purely by chance this morning. The recent history made me chuckle.

**** : did you see the templates that girl did during the blogathon? she cant have dun them live, it would take me ages to design them!

******** : no, didn’t see them. whose site?

****: can’t remember her name, that one with a bat fetish.

A bat fetish? Classic!

Just in time for Easter comes the news that has certainly put a huge smile on my face, and I presume many other chocoholics in the land – choolate is actually good for you.

Far from being good for nothing, or for merely piling on the pounds Easter Eggs can actually reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer and even boost fertility levels.

The bearer of this superb news is a lecturer Northern Ireland’s College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise.

She advices that not all chocolates are created equal, and what is needed is a chocolate with a high concentration of cocoa. Cocoa beans are packed with antioxidant polyphenols which the experts believe help to reduce the risk of heart disease and may also help fight cancer.

Red wine in moderation, and orange juice are well known for their health giving properties. But, apparently, “A 50 gram piece of dark chocolate has the same level of antioxidants as two glasses of wine or seventeen glasses of orange.’’

It also rich in Iron, Zinc, and valeric acid (relaxant and tranquiliser).

So, there has never been a greater excuse for a chocy. Caution is still advised, as despite its obvious health benefits, chocolate can be seriously damaging to the size of your arse.

The hiatus may be a little longer than a few days. I don’t feel inclined to make the details of my life public at the moment. Rather more is going on now than a few days ago, and none of it is positive.

It could be I will return early 2005, but at this stage I cannot, with all honesty, make any guarantees.

Its been fun. I’ve met some terrific people via this medium, and I would like to think that this will not be the end.

Move along if you don’t like personal posts. You aren’t missing out on anything, do yourself a favour and just pass it by.

Today has been hard, really hard and I feel really low. Mum was ill today, not terribly so, but enough to flatten her for the entire day. I guess the drugs which are given to repress chemo side effects aren’t 100% reliable all of the time.

I feel so, weak. That’s the word I was looking for, weak. You know I’ve been trying to get that word out for the last hour, and finally in a haze of tears it comes. Mum’s gone to bed, and I’m sat here in front of my computer trying so hard to hold back tears because if I cry I won’t be able to see the words on the monitor. This is my time, when I don’t have to be hiding feelings. This is when I can unleash, except for one thing, and this is going to sound so sad – I only have this weblog to unleash to, well except for my cat.

I’ve been feeling terrible for the last few days. All of a sudden suddenly I started to feel depressed, scared, lonely, especially lonely and abandoned. By everybody. Of course if I had someone to speak to I probably wouldn’t actually tell them anything. I’d say how everything was fine, and rapidly change the subject. I’m just built that way I guess, I bottle emotions up until I am fit to explode, and when I explode it is usually in the form of a panic attack.

That said, I wouldn’t know what to say. Most of my life I have felt alienated from everyone. I can stand in a room full of people, and still feel alone. So if I have trouble relating to people, why should I expect anyone to relate to me? or even care enough to listen?

I’m a lousy friend. I don’t call people, I forget their birthdays, and I never return calls. It hasn’t always been like that, it seems to be something that has rapidly developed over the last few years. I guess I assumed that I couldn’t make friendships work because I was this awful person who people could only relate to for a short time before they tired and moved on. Maybe I’m just not built for friendship, maybe I am just too much of a flawed individual for people to like I remember thinking. Maybe I have too much of an idealised notion of friendship, that reality can never live up to. Maybe I ask too much. Maybe that’s why I gave up and decided to figure out the loneliness the best way I could – alone.

Somewhere along the lines I learnt that the only time I was worth knowing was when I was happy and acting like the funny sarcastic girl, that I’m not really worth knowing when I’m depressed or miserable. Maybe I distance myself at these times because I know I aren’t really worth knowing.

I miss Monica. She’d understand I think, well maybe.

It hurts.
It really hurts.
It’s like a pain in my chest that won’t go away. A panic that won’t be quelled.
I’m alone.

I’m such a drama queen.

I realise my mother isn’t the supermum, but is actually mortal and my whole world falls apart. I’m 29 years old, I should be able to deal with this shouldn’t I? I make no apologies for the fact I think my mother is amazing, she’s not just my mother she’s my best friend, my confidant…

But it’s not just that, it’s, well it’s everything. I can’t sleep. I can’t study. I can’t eat. I can’t write, my god I can’t write again. I have reams and reams of scrunched up scribbled on paper by my desk. The only time I can sleep is when I’ve bashed my way up and down a swimming pool for two hours, and I haven’t been able to today because it was closed. I’m loosing my temper at the smallest problem. I’m suddenly, and for no apparent reason bursting into tears.

I can’t sleep. My mind refuses to be silent, possible scenarios scorching through my brain like hot coals that refuse to be cooled. This waiting is the worst, at least before she was there, I could ask her how she felt. But that isn’t an option now, she’s in the next town in a hospital ward and all I can do is worry – is she ok? is she worried? has she been able to sleep?

This is unknown territory for me, I’ve never been a worrier, and I hardly ever see the glass as half empty. But this is different, I’m scared something will go wrong, that she won’t come round after the operation, or the operation will prove its more extensive than they initially thought. There are so many things that could go wrong, I’m mentally listing all possible scenarios based on her ailments in my head and calculating a risk factor.

I think I’m going mad. I’d like to shut down my brain for a while because it’s starting to hurt.

I’m finding more and more that those who offered their support in the early stages didn’t really mean it. Unless you offer the typical English rhetoric “oh everything?fs fine, we’re all absolutely smashing, super in fact” they don’t actually want to know. No one is really interested in hearing, “well, no everything isn’t alright and no I don’t think a cup of tea will fix it”. Maybe it’s just me, maybe the fact I am having such a hard time dealing with this is too much for most people.

I wish I could sleep.

This afternoon as I sat in the ward I wondered, how genuine are the average persons emotions? I wondered, how many of them cry for themselves rather than the patient. I’ve heard a lot of me, me and er me just recently, not once did it come from my mother’s direction.

How many show exagerated emotion to cover just how detached they feel inside?

When I said I frequently felt detached from people it wasn’t merely to illustrate how I have a tendency to stand in a corner and twitch at parties. The only things to inspire deep emotion in me to date have tended to have four legs, so you could say this is new territory for me – of course my Mum has always been different, in much the same way I was different for her.

I wish I could sleep. If I had sleep maybe I would make more sense

I had one hell of a rough night last night. I was running a temperature, and felt quite peculiar at several points. Despite this my mind seemed clearer than it had done in a long time. I spent much of the night thinking about pretty much the same issues I raised in my post yesterday which seemed to inspire some controversy in certain parts. Interesting, a lot of things I expected from that posting, controversy wasn’t one. Let me explain.

There are certain things which I don’t actually place on my blog, one of these things are posts about people who might actually read it. So if you do know me, and I know you visit you can pretty much be certain the content of the posts will never be about you.

But the entry last night did raise some interesting questions that I will later address in my new found level of honesty. I spend a lot of time contemplating self; the gift of self evaluation has always been one of my strong points. I’m aware of my strengths and pretty much all of my weaknesses.

One would be failing is I have a tendency to be something of a loner, and if I continue with this sudden spate of blatant honesty I will go as far as to say I am comfortable with being a loner. I don’t need people as a rule, I occasionally like their company, but I don’t need them. It?fs a failing nearly every single member of my family suffers from, the tendency to being reclusive. Yet, despite the fact I state I am happy being a loner, I still refer to it as a ‘failing’. You see it don’t you? In black and white plain as day, mentioned the word failing twice.

This blog is a record of my thoughts, that is its primary function. It is not there to provide an objective opinion, or to criticise others. It is my record, which I have chosen to make public. Now public invitations at random are fine, but the problem appears when public become friends, and suddenly a compromise has to be made. Do you continue writing as before, without a thought for how your words impact on others? Or do you edit and amend so that you don’t say anything which can be mis-interpreted? I have equipped myself with several rules, one is I never speak of someone I know who is likely to read this blog – mentioned above. It usually works, but since I’ve never mentioned this rule I thought I better now to avoid any further ‘misunderstandings’.