Kiddo is away with his Dad for a whole two weeks.

I’ve just realised this has never happened in his whole eight years.

Everyone keeps telling me “cool put your feet up and relax”.

Heh. Fuck that I have stuff to do.

Washing walls, masking, painting. Repeat.

I managed to storm through a child’s bedroom, a hallway & laundry yesterday. Then it was a back crack & out for dinner.

This morning I feel like I have done a marathon effort at the gym.

Today? Coding and designing. Out for a walk to the library.

Tonight?

Crackers, cheese and wine and books. Lots of books to sink my teeth into.

Tomorrow?

More marathon painting.

Painting, artwork, geekery galore. Perhaps some well placed smut writing.

I have 14 days worth.

Busy busy impy.

I am needing to purge so purge I will …. ( I don’t need sympathy or anything else this is simply a place for me to write)

As a child Christmas was never a good time. And for a long while after I left home Christmas wasn’t something I really celebrated.

Basically because you always managed to fuck it up with your drunkeness or your dark moods that lashed out and slapped us all sideways. Normally it would be  a great morning of unwrapping presents and having a rare moment of all being happy together. Then we would get ready to go to a relatives house where all the extended family would gather for more presents and feasting and grandchildren and cousins running amok and the adults being jovial and joking and sharing funtimes. My blood family. It wasn’t yours though was it? And you always made it clear that you didn’t like being around them. Even after you treated my mother like shit they still accepted you. They gave all of us, the siblings, equal love. They didn’t care. My god they tried, every damn year.

Instead of arriving and enjoying the rest of the day you would get halfway there and decide that we weren’t going anywhere and turn back home. I remember the tears and consoling two little children who were alot younger than me who had no understanding of what was happening except we had no choice in the matter and a mother who didn’t drive. At the mercy of your mood swings as always.

But today? Christmas Day? Was this a cruel joke? Were you really that self absorbed in your own pile of shit that you didn’t see what you were doing?

Year after year, aprehension, worry that if we said or did the wrong thing we would cause you to get angry. You’d either turn into Dr.Jekyll and we’d all cringe and the day would be over and covered in that poisonous dark cloud or we’d go to family gatherings and you’d get blind drunk and be a total and utter embarrassment.

Then mum got wise to your shit. She learnt to drive, she left you at home to wallow in your own dark murk. We went and spent time in good company with family but all the while that darkness followed us wherever we went. It didn’t matter that we were away from it, but that knawing knowing that we would eventually have to come back home to that darkness. Usually it was you lying in a pool of your own piss, passed out, drunk.

By the time I left home I had no idea what real families did at Christmas time. All I knew is they were a time when it was best to not get my hopes up.

For a few years I spent Christmas with other friends who had nowhere to go or families were too far away. Personally I liked being far, far away. I missed my siblings and my mother but I sure as hell didn’t miss your abuse and the misery that sits around you like a diseased dark cloud. Then I decided that Christmas wasn’t my thing and that I would follow what felt right and do the Yule thing. Ancestral stuff, something that runs in my veins.

Then along came kiddo and I discovered the real joy of Christmas again, his joy. He is my gift in so many ways, year after year he teaches me things. And in turn he helps mummy light candles for Yule and do the baking. I made my own space with my own little family.

I spent a couple days with my brother & sister just before Christmas, we had the nieces and nephews and mum there. It was awesome. The only thing that irks me and it always does that no matter what we do there is always that dark cloud sitting in the background. And yet again you rose your ugly head in our thoughts.

We mumbled various bits and bobs about the fact that yet again you chose to not participate, not to see your grandchildren but instead choose a bottle over family. It does irk me. Not personally as my relationship with you died a long time ago. But to see the hurt in my brothers and sisters faces.

My sister is watching her father in law die from cancer, the last Christmas with his grandchildren and family. Have you hugged her and told her how wonderfully strong she is? No.

My brother has just had a beautiful wee baby daughter grace this world and it’s her first Christmas. You live less than 1km away … yet you’ve seen her once, and you were drunk.

My brother and  I had a deep talk and amongst chatter about a few things, including me telling him about the guilt I felt when I left home, I apologised for being absent from his life for the next five years and explained why I did what I did. He already knew why and understood. I love his heart.

He spoke about our childhood and the fact that we never really had a normal family, we didn’t hug or tell each other we loved one another, you isolated us from so many things, but the biggest thing that hurt was when my brother said he realised he’s never had a real father. A father that never said “I’m proud of you son”, never congratulated him on his engagement, never went to his wedding, never congratulated him on the birth of his first born or supported him through the complications of IVF. And so many more things. YOU know this already.

You have lost not one but three children over the years. Your choice to choose depression and alcoholism is stronger than your need for family. You choose to hurt and lash out with words, to criticise and never praise, to look for faults and not encourage or support.

What you don’t realise is all that anger and hurt has taught all three of us is that in the face of hard times, we all are there for one another. That love and understanding DOES conquer and that your darkness can fuck off back to where it dwells.

That the words “I love you” are easy to say. And say them we do.

That we CAN have Christmas back.

Our way.

With all of our beautiful children.

And most of all we all tell them how proud we are of them.

And all the while you can choose to sit in your dark little cave drinking from that bottle and choosing to regret and dwell on things that don’t matter, on things that are your own demons.

Not ours anymore.

It’s too late for you and I’ve accepted that but it doesn’t stop the hurt I see in those two, and them hurting hurts me.

Then I get pissed.

So I write.

Sex, drug use, drug overdose, gambling, home done tattoos. Rihannas new video clip. Taio Cruz- I wanna drink till i throw up.

Lady Gaga- lesbian sex, domination, almost full blown nudity. LMFAO- a video clip of nothing but jiggling penises.

Welcome to the world ********, this is what music means nowadays. Poor kid.

I love my family but sometimes they irk me. This is the same family member that whispers behind my back about my choice in sexuality namely kink. I don’t give a rats arse what they think. Seriously they have never had the balls to ask me upfront about it. Not once but instead they run to a close family member who tells me everything. Apparently what I do is wrong. *laughs*

Hmmm lemme see …

sex – yep had that, did any of those bands or any music in my life cause me to think oo I must have the sexors now!

NO

drugs – yep I experimented not because of music. Although I must admit some music sounded better  at the time LOL. Did it make me want to do drugs?

NO

Gambling? WTF?!?!?!

Home done tattoos? Ummm talk to alot of tattooists and you’ll find that’s how they started their trade. And eeerr your husband is covered in them …. Are his tattoos the result of music?

NO

What really irked me was this bit “Lady Gaga- lesbian sex, domination, almost full blown nudity. ” We know Lady Gaga is a dork. But I gotta admit I like a couple of her videos. They are teh awesome. My son thinks shes a dick. The reference to domination, lesbian sex and nudity …. this irks me.

Acknowledging your sexuality is okay. It’s healthy. We are lucky to live in a world where these things can be expressed without prejudice and more acceptance. There is nothing wrong with lesbians or homosexuality. There is nothing wrong with kink. There is NOTHING wrong with nudity. Don’t be a judgemental arsehole.

Thankfully because I haven’t been a prude with my child, because I have honestly and openly discussed things with my son and talked about things with him he has a wider understanding and hopefully he’ll be comfortable in his own skin without feeling judged. I’m his mother not the decider of how he should choose to express himself. His best friend has two mummies. He thinks that’s cool. So do I. I draw tattoos for people. Does that make me a bad person in your eyes? Oh wait …. I do that weird sex stuff, that stuff you don’t want to talk to me about but you are happy to tell everyone else about.

I grew up listening to Ozzy, Black Sabbath, The Police, Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, Madonna, Prince, and a whole electic range of music. now I listen to classical music, blues, old stuff and the new, metal, rock. And guess what? I turned out okay. I grew up watching music videos, hell everyday I listened to music and not once was I told what I was listening to was bad. I hung out with musicians for years … they taught me so much more about music. Your child isn’t stupid they will discover music and one day they might listen to music that doesn’t fit your tastes but it doesn’t mean it’s bad for them.

There is still good stuff. They will learn this. If you want to help and not hinder give them choice, educate them, and enjoy music for what it is, not some preconceived notions. I grew up being told by a bunch’o'nutters that my music choices were going to send me to hell.

Yeah. Right.

Most of all trust your child to make the right choices. Give her a good bunch of role models. Let her trip and fall and be there to pick her up but never tell her she’s wrong for being herself.

Here’s a hint …

P.S. Merry Christmas you gorgeous bunch’o'freaks’ xxxx

We’ve all been there. Someone so special in our lives that makes an impact, a huge one. And then there is loss. Heartache. Sometimes even a level of devastation that leaves us scared and changed. Permanently.

I’ve been catching up on a few blogs tonight, some that I have followed since before starting this blog, way back when I had the old one that some remember. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t deleted it in a fit of anger and hurt because there were some beautiful words. Reminders that I can submit to someone on a level I never though feasible. Reminders that I once did find a space within myself that literally flew. I soared.

I read those words tonight “And you never forget your first. ” In the realms of kink and all thats mindfucky I did. My god, in mind I went there with every particle of my being. It is a freeing experience. To be able to hand over the reins completely and just give, trust and just be.

Then came devastation, hurt, anger and a whole pile of emotions. And then to top it off a loss of a dear friend.

I hit rock bottom. If it wasn’t for a small few writers that I love to bits I don’t know if I would have come out of it all. I really had no idea how to walk away intact. To give yourself to a level to that degree and to have that ripped out from underneath you is almost like learning to walk again. To have the courage to delve into that realm is something I have great respect for. It is for the strong and the courageous, it is a path for those who want to really live life and breathe it.

The blogging community, kinksters in general who understand the things we do, if they hadn’t seen the signs, known my own personal loss and the insane mind benders that followed. If they hadn’t soothed me with words of encouragement and advice and just being there for me … well. I am solitudal by nature. The deep stuff doesn’t come out freely. I am in a certain respect extremely private with emotional things. There are walls that are well constructed and not many get to go deeply into the psyche. There are wolves and demons that dwell in the dark places and they need a soul that is not afraid to push past them.

Chatting to an old friend the other night who I hadn’t talked to reminded me of the friendships bourne from this thing called blogging. A comment that I and a few others had been rocks through times of hardship and struggles, it really brought home something. I’ve done things differently, my end goal is the same but I am strong enough to know what isn’t right for me. If anything ‘he’ taught me that. He helped me discover a part of myself that was buried and hidden.

He taught me what real love was. Something I will hold dearly. It is something we all strive for but many never really find. Growth came from learning to let go and have faith that one day I might find that intensity again.

People come into your life at different times to share and grow and I for one am grateful for every connection I make here and outside of the blog. They are the voice of reason I have related to, understood and admired.

We are writers, poets and muses for one another and ourselves. I am grateful that I am allowed a small part of that world, to share without judgement but love and understanding.

And the funny part is apparently … most of us are doing it wrong.

I’d rather being doing it wrong with that lot anyday.

So this is a wee thank you. Thank you for sharing and allowing me into the places that are outside of here. The places that make us a whole person and not some random blogger that writes smut to amuse the masses.

I do value those quiet spaces where we talk and share. Very much so.

‘beams’

xxx