It’s been a funny year.

It’s been more than ten months since Jay moved out. I can’t believe how quickly it has flown by. Not long now until Darren & I will be celebrating our first anniversary. 

Amanda, me, Darren & B at our holiday cottage for Whitby Goth Weekend, April 2007

Goth Fest, April 2007

Darren, Amanda, Me & Berni

After weeks of constant text messaging and daily phone calls, Darren moved in with me in May. I started back at work in June, after three months off for treatment for depression and stress.  I've now transferred back into the service that I work for, which means that I only have ONE team leader to worry about!

Me at Upleatham Church Yard

And during a photo shoot at home

Our favourite picnic spot

Our visit to Belsay Hall

In October, we had two new additions to our family – Amber, our GSD x puppy and Sam, my mum’s Labrador x.

Darren & I at Whitby Goth Weekend, October 2007

Darren at our holiday cottage, October 2007

As my divorce has still not yet been finalised, and Darren is having a hard time finding work, in December I decided to turn Salsa away for a six month holiday while we get sorted out.

Fingers crossed it won’t be long before Darren has a job and my divorce is settled, and we can get on with enjoying our lives.

From www.sexualastrology.com

Scorpio - Weekly Horoscope
Your feelings are fine and pure now, and at the same time you will want contact with beauty, amusement, aesthetics and art as way of releasing your creative inspiration.

During the time of this aspect it is advisable to acquire a greater vision of the positive elements that sentimentally are forming part of your life; thus, if you give inner thanks for the good things happening to you, it is very probable that they are expanded and magnified. 


Scorpio & Virgo:
  You share an ability to communicate, empathize and understand 
  one another. Your conversations get better over time and so does 
the sexual relationship. There is an unspoken bond between 
Scorpio and Virgo that once established, will hardly ever be broken. Virgo is a keeper for sexy Scorpio and vice versa. You will provide each other with what the other person instinctively needs and desires sexually. Sexual and romantic compatibility will be volcanic. A strong friendship and loyalty will keep these two together. Scorpio must not play any head games with Virgo or there will be a serious price to pay. Virgo will help keep Scorpio grounded and healthy. The prognosis for a long-term love is excellent. Focus on healing yourselves and you both will have found a mate for life.



 The Chinese Horoscope - The Rat (1984)

Metal Rat: 1900, 1960
Water Rat: 1912, 1972
Wood Rat: 1924, 1984
                          Fire Rat: 1936, 1966
                            Earth Rat: 1948, 2008

Could I have done anything?  Possibly. Probably. Got rid of that extra weight I always whinged about.  Made a bit more of an effort.  Reined in the temper from time to time.  Actually thanking the temper today - when I found out he was bed-hopping after only a week, I knocked his tooth out.  I hope it fucking hurts for longer than it took to get over me.  Apparently I'm the psycho, and I'm the one with the handprints and bruises and swollen ribs - apparently  the line about not hitting girls only counts when they're not bouncing your head off the fridge with their fist and screaming loud enough to wake the dead, let alone the neighbours.  I tried to be everything he wanted, and denied myself everything that I was.  For years I played a role, I was just too stupid to see that the title of the role was "his mother".  No feisty sex kitten there - no, sireebob.  I was meant to work a 37 hour week to pay the bills while he sat at home all day, smoking and drinking himself into an early grave.  Even when he did get his finger out and get a job, it was a 25 hour a week evening shift.  Paranoia screams that it was so he didn't have to see me - after all, I was at work all day, and he was at work from when I finished until I went to bed.  Alone.  Always alone.  For the sake of whatever poor bitch is putting up with him now, I hope his performance in the bedroom has significantly improved.   Although it will only last a couple of months.  Then he will be back falling asleep to cartoons on the sofa while she sleeps alone.  Sorry, babe, I'm too tired.  Gods, I am bloody stupid sometimes.  All the time.  Whatever.

*    *   *   *   *   *

They say smoking kills.  Well, I say "they" - the damn carton has it written in enormous lettering on the side.  Sixth cigarette in twenty minutes.  I can but hope that "they" are correct and smoking does indeed kill.  I've messed up big time.  Forsaken my sanity, my life and my education for what?  For love?  In that case love can fuck right off.  If that's the sort of ridiculous behaviour it induces, then love is far more dangerous than drugs and should carry it's own bloody Government warning lable.  White box with big black letters "Love clogs the common sense centres of the brain and causes stupidity, heartbreak and generally messes you up".
I know, it's late, I'm tired, I'm drugged to the eyeballs on prescribed meds, nicotine and caffeine, but I honestly cannot get my head around what is going on.  I've fucked up.  Again.  In more ways than one.  Keep making mistake after mistake, promises that I cannot keep.  Truths that are real for a moment, and intangible the next.  So intelligent, apparently.  Destined for Cambridge, apparently. Destined for great things.  Whoops, reality check!  Destined for debt, an admin job a trained monkey could keep on top of and a well stocked personal pharmacy.  Financially, I will be paying for this mistake until I'm fifty-one.  Emotionally, I'll be paying it off for the rest of my life, however short that may be.  The Novelist, the Artist, the Musician, the Daughter, the Friend,  the Wife, the Mother... I have clearly excelled at all of these things.   When Karma cashes in, she withdraws the lot.  Where was my great intelligence then?  I should have been planning to get my ass back to college, not planning to spend the rest of my life with one person.  Should have been planning to have some fun, like other eighteen year olds, not throwing myself from the cliffs of adolescence into the seas of responsibility.  Kinda stuck in that trap now.  Sacrifice my independence?  Fuck off - I have no intention of sharing again.  Hello, chucking my toys out of the pram here.  My house, my home, my money.  The only kind of joint anything I want is the kind that gets you stoned.

*    *   *   *   *   *

I have great friends.  I appreciate them, honestly and truely. They know who they are, without the need for me to point fingers.  Four in particular who deserve my gratitude.  I can laugh with them, smile, make plans, but it's all so brief - so temporary.  It's so easy to be honest, or rather to think I'm being honest.  I was told today (yesterday, whatever) that psychologists think we have three voices, positive, negative and balance.  It's so easy to let the balanced or positive voices out under scrutiny.  To shut that little negative voice in a box and ignore her.  But She's there, clawing her way to the light and you can hear her whispering to you.  Plotting revenge for her isolation.  And She does take revenge; brutally and without warning.   Yes, I can smile and nod and believe that I'm in a happy place, but it's a façade, a brightly painted front door closed over a dark and run down building.  Killing loneliness with the people I hold dearest.  But even they can't watch me 24/7 and the Negative is tap, tap, tapping on her box, seducing with venomous whispers.  She wants blood and destruction and despair.  And revenge, and She will take it however she may.  Plaster on your happy face, don that mask, and soon it sticks to you, fused with your skin, and no matter how hard you may try, the mask will not be removed.  You must smile and laugh and flirt and believe you are coping while She is scratching away, beseeching in a voice that drips with poison to let her out, let her out, let her out.  And it's all so easy.  All it takes is a guy with gorgeous eyes, a six-pack and a cute smile to have me throwing myself to my knees (what remains of them) begging Please! Fuck me up, screw me over, break my heart! Again.  Emotional masochist that I am.  I crave it. I desire the pain.  Something in my soul screams "hurt me!" and I set myself up beautifully.  The Arrogant Prince; The Emotional Assassin; The Already Involved; The Meretricious User; The Promiscuous Skater;  and let's not forget He-Who-Ruined-A-Friendship-Fucked-Me-Over-And-Fucked-Off-To-Fucking-Humiliate-Me.  I threw myself at all of them at the whim of Negativity whose rancour would prove to be my ruination. She of the rose-tinted glasses, which slip over the eyes so easily.  Over the mask.  Love is carnage of the soul, and She feasts on the carrion. 

*    *   *   *   *   *

Amazing how 4:20am, twenty Berkley superkings, diazepam and a million cups of coffee can help you see the truth.  I do this because I want it.  I lust for it. I chose partners that my instincts tell me will vandalise me, as surely as a blade stroke across flesh draws blood.  Why?  A defective sense of self-worth that requires degrading at every available opportunity, perhaps.  A spiral to be danced onwards and downwards into the depths of self-loathing.
She watches and She waits and She conspires.  The Positive and the Balance are no match for the Negative.  The scales tip in her favour and She is free.  Free of her cage.  Free of restraint.  Free to feed.

I just remembered about this thing... whole life has been totally weird for a while now, so I totally forget I'm even signed up with this sort of stuff.

Good news first, I guess.  Am 21 now.  Bleh! It's strange to no longer be a teenager (twen-teen being my age of choice! Twen-teen-one just doesn't have the same ring to it) and it really was a major turn around point for my life.  Jay bought me a horse of my very own (not one I have to share with my parents), which was lovely of him.   This is Salsa :o)  He's a 7 year old, 15.2hh ex racehorse.  My dad and step-mum still have to do all the hard work for me, due to state of ridiculous joints, but he's all mine and I get to make his decisions :oD

Bad news.. Man does there seem to be a lot of this...

Jay lost his job (approx 2 weeks after buying me Salsa).  He's been bullied by work for months and has had no end of problems, but the final straw came when they suspended him for something he hadn't done, then they admitted he hadn't done anything wrong, so accused him of "forging a sick note" :os .  He just got so stressed over the whole thing, he decided to just quit and get out of it all, because when he said he didn't do any such thing, they tried to accuse ME of forging a sick note.  Sick fucked up bunnies.  So now he's all stressed and worried about finding another job, as we have things like mortgage and food to pay for (plus the menagerie) and even though he's been scoring between 85 and 95% on all these agency aptitude tests, no one will offer him a job because we don't have our own car.  How stupid is that?? So we're trying to scrape by on my wages (which barely covers all the bills, let alone eating, paying for horse, paying for Candleston's expensive operations, etc) and my uncle has lent us what seems like a vast amount of money to tide us over, but realistically I know it'll disappear quicker than you can say "money down the drain".  Jay's been all depressed and moping around and cutting himself and shit, which makes me feel crap.  I've no idea how I'm supposed to react - should I be all softly softly, or tough-love?  My reaction is to respond with serious physical violence, but I know that won't help and have just had to bite my tongue and pretend that Jay being depressed all the time isn't making me feel depressed and worthless.  I tried to convince him that we can sue for corporate bullying and constructive dismissal (my theory is that they're trying to get rid of all staff with disabilities in a roundabout way), but he doesn't want to know.  He says he's too depressed and can't be bothered with the stress.

Other badness is that Candleston, the owl, broke her wing a few weeks ago, which has cost a small fortune so far to put right.  She's due another very expensive operation next month to have the pin removed.  God knows where the money will come from.

And finally, I'm having a shit time at work.  A few weeks ago, I had an accident at the weekend and sprained my ankle.  Since I already have what my specialist described as "chronic ankle sprains" which have never gone away, it was incredibly painful and I could barely hobble around.  Work insisted that I had to see a doctor at Occupational Health, despite the fact that I've forced myself into work for almost eight months and have even been violently sick at work before and not dared go home and this was only three days absence so didn't even require a doctor's note.  The letter that was sent from Human Resources went something like this:

"As it transpires, Sarah's difficulties only occur on Monday to Friday as at weekends she partakes in activities such as horse riding and sings with a band".

The gist of this letter was that they were trying to get the doctor to say I'm a hypochondriac and I was furious that they've made these accusations without speaking to me and getting the full story.  Yes I have a horse, but I have to have people look after him for me, yes I ride, but it's not easy in much the same way that coming to work every day is NOT EASY.  I only ride for fifteen minutes when I feel well enough and occasionally have a 30 minute lesson but I'm able to stop when I need to, and I ALWAYS go home from the yard in agony.  But why should I feel I have to give up things I love?  Yes, I'm a vocalist in a FOLK band!  I have photographs of me singing from my WHEELCHAIR on a fucking WEEKEND. They've assumed because of the way I look, I'm leaping around on stage and throwing my weight around in a mosh-pit, belting out rock song.  I have a CHAIR on stage when we're actually stationary and on our "moving around" gigs, I use the wheelchair.  These performances only come up once in a blue moon, so it's not like I'm out all the time.  Most of my weekends are actually spent in the house, trying to rest. I have a formal diagnosis letter from Professor Grahame in London (who is one of the top Hypermobility specialists in the country) who has diagnosed me with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Hypermobility type, which is a real goddamn disability, fucking Google it if you don't believe me (man, I wish I'd had a proper diagnosis when I was at school rather than just HMS, which is very vague.  A lot of people would have gotten a good screaming at, let me tell you!).

So anyways, I spent most of this appointment crying because I decided I wasn't going to keep putting a brave face on things, and I really told it how it is.  I told the doctor I was feeling depressed, despite my meds, and that my employer had made things so much more difficult, not only in their treatment of me, but in what they had done to Jay. I said exactly what I think of the company, and boy did that make me feel better!  I told him about every little ache and pain I have all day every day, and it was such a relief to get everything out in the open. 

The result is that this doctor doesn't think I'm fit to work from a physical pain point of view, and told me in his "honest and professional opinion" that I'm not going to get better as there's no cure for EDS.  I'm still actually at work, because I don't think HR have had his report yet, but he wants to sign me off and review me in three months.  Work will NOT be happy about this and I know they will go looking for a reason to either fire me or get me to resign.  So I'm sure in the next week or so, I'll have a lovely meeting to look forward to which will get me all raged up and will probably result in me punching someone until they're covered in blood.  Not that my hands would hold out for this long... Maybe I should just take my walking stick and poke them all repeatedly?  It could be a bit like Chinese water torture.

Can't wait to go home, but I have a great pile of work to get done and Jay will be at home being all miserable and making me feel worse because there's nothing I can do to help him.

Why is everything so expensive and difficult these days?

Work are being really arsey about my hydrotherapy sessions ("You're not entitled to medical appointments, so you have to take it off as flexi, but you can only have two half flexi-days a month" when I'm only actually out for half an hour of their time and my lunch hour NOT the whole morning, and I have EIGHT sessions a month!).  It's not like I'm taking it because I felt like it... umm, hello - rheumatologist referred me... And at the end of the day, I'll probably be attending hydrotherapy long after I've said "goodbye" to the job! Grrr... anyways, have got UNISON on the case, so will hopefully be sorted out soon.

Have also made an appointment to see Prof Rodney Grahame at the hypermobility clinic in London in October.  He's one of the country's leading specialists in HMS and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, so should be good.  Am sick of local rheumatologist who simply hasn't got a clue about Hypermobility Syndrome and keeps making me leave my appointments more frustrated than when I went in.  I just don't have time for people who try to tell me what I'm feeling. Why don'tt they come and spend a week in my body, THEN they can try to tell me what I feel. It's ridiculous - you don't go to your GP and have them tell you all your symptoms before you've walked in the door, so why should any other doctor be different?  Stupid bloody NHS....

Bunch of pics: