School Time

I didn't like the school I went to...  I think there were quite a few reasons for this looking back on things now. 

1) I was a tomboy and would probably have been happier in a boys school than in a girls school
2) I accidentally got put up a year
3) I had a few minor health problems such as my skin and joint pains that made Physical Ed hard for me and this was a large part of the day, with one of the seven periods each day occupied by it
4) It was a boarding school and I did not board.  A really good way to never be part of things....
5) I was a geek....

I always wanted to belong, to have a best friend, to be part of things, but somehow I never was.  I can look back on it as an adult now and see that the girls I was at school with were pretty unhappy.  For some it was a good and stable place to be because their family life was pretty bad.  Some of my classmates had left their homes so young, 7 or 8...  I think they envied me going home and my nice Mum.

But anyway...  enough of the bad stuff...

The school was in an old manor house set in huge grounds and we pretty much were able to roam as we would.  I would always get in the back of my Dads van because my sis was much more of a lady than me and we would go the couple of miles to school and then down the long drive and he would drop us off at the grand entrance.

Our days would begin with assembly in the hall.  It was the only hall when I began with a grand stage and velvet curtains and old style gym apparatus folded against the walls.  I had not been their long when they built a sports hall but assembly was always in the main hall.

My first classroom was very close to the hall, just down some stairs and we were there as my class would file into our allocated rows at the front.  There would always be a reading and a hymn and I always enjoyed singing.  On Fridays a local vicar would come and take assembly.  There was one vicar who was so very lovely, his face was round and shone with loveliness.  Another young vicar came one time and ate a daffodil.

Once a term, for a week we would have class assemblies where a different class would do the assembly for that day.  We all used to look forward to doing this as it was a chance to do something quite fun.  There was also concerts and plays and all sorts of events that took place in the hall.  I remember there would be a concert at the end of every term for the parents and children as they got picked up.  We would sing Auld Langs Syne and I would so glad to be getting out of there....

I remember doing a nativity play.  I was the Inn Keeper.  The school had an interesting set of costumes, collected over many years.  Apparently the costume I choose for myself had a different colour for every item of clothing and very long boots.  My Mum and Sister rescued a really old jacket from the dress up chest which they paid for and have looked after ever since.

My first year I was the youngest girl in the school.  It was tradition that the youngest girl and the head girl would jointly light the bonfire on Bonfire Night.  The only thing I remember about these evenings was the size of the Bonfire.  I think the workmen collected wood for some time and their bonfires were a work of art.  I think I vaguely remember a guy as well.

We would have two lessons and then a break with tea and biscuits and then a further two lessons then lunch in the small dining room, or was it one?  Then lunch in the Small Dining Room and then lunch time then more lessons until 4.  As we got older, we had an extra lesson in the morning, a later lunch and a shorter lunch break.  At 4 there would be tea and cake.

The food was alright.  If you did not eat your veg you had to stay there until you did.  I hated it and was often stuck there for some time....  The only thing my Mum signed to say I did not have to eat it was Prunes, for which I have been ever thankful...  We had to cut up apples with a knife to eat them and table manners were very important.  Each day you would move round a place so the people on each table changed a little and you would sit with different staff.

I remember super shiny floors that were good fun to skid on.  I remember ice and a place that was always treacherous by the library and english room.  I remember boring a bike (I was not supposed to use the bikes because they were for boarders only) and coming off on the gravel on a bed on the dirt road down to the music block (I still have the scar).  I remember climbing trees.  All sorts of trees.  I remember watching tadpoles in the pond, squirrels on the lawn and wafting swarms of daddy long legs as we walked down to the music block.

The building fascinated me.  It had been added to and added to over the years so that it was a maze of corridors and rooms and no student ever got to see all of it.  Staff had rooms and little flats.  Other rooms were offices or hazardous or just plain private.  As a day girl I was rarely allowed into the dorms.  Boarders were not supposed to go to the dorms in breaks but I think they could at lunchtime.  I remember one Christmas my Mum took me in with her over the holidays as she had some work to do.  I spent a pleasurable afternoon exploring all the places I could not go at other times.  I went through every single dorm. My only disappointment was that tehre was no one to tell me which one was the haunted one....

But then there was the ghost everyone knew about, the one in the Mirror Hall.  This hall had a grand staircase and a floor to ceiling mirror and it was said that if you were on the stairs at night sometimes you would see a ghostly lady reflected in the mirror stood by you, and sometimes there would be a draft blowing out of the mirror and once someone had disappeared behind it...  There was rumoured to be tunnels and I remember one teacher telling us that there was a place she had found in the cellar where something had been bricked up and there was a draft.

One of the many places we were not supposed to go into was the old air raid shelter, which of course we did.  We were also not supposed to go beyond the school grounds, which I know I did.  I knew a family with a house beyond in the field and sometimes I would stand there and gaze at it, I even struck out once into the field.  Another time I walked along the edge, between the field and the wall of the walled gardens.  I never got to go in the gardens, but you could gaze out into it from the music block, rows of vegetables mostly.

Sometimes when there was snow we would be alloed to use plastic fertilizer bags to sled down the air raid shelter and then we got older we would go to the woods behind the school and sled down the big hill too.  That was one of the few PE lessons I enjoyed.  Swimming was torture - slogging away, lifesaving in clothes and the like.  Afterwards i would be so tired that walking back up the hill and getting to lessons on time was a problem for me.  I loathed tennis, although netball was alright.  Hockey was fine if the weather was ok, but we playe din pretty much any weather, mostly in our silly little gym skirts.  And cross country, ugh.  I liked badminton the best.  We each had a locker, old, old lockers used by generations of girls.

Everything was old and worn and well used.  The girls there may have been priviledged in some senses but life at school certainly was not.  In many ways there was very little freedom for anyone.  In fact some middle eastern families sent their daughters there for precisely that reason.  We wrote with ink pens and our desks had holes for ink pots we no longer used.  They had fold up lids for our books and years of graffitti.  Our school books were ancient our chairs hard and wooden.  As we got older we would have a sit for our class which would have comfy chairs and a record player.  I remember playing Final Countdown by Europe a lot and Silver Blue by Roxette.  Boarders had pet hamsters and tuck boxes.

Is it any wonder I felt left out as a day girl?  There were so many things they appeared to have that we did not, places to go we were not allowed.  They bonded in the face of adversity.  But still I know that they would have swapped with me in a flash, most of them, I think...

If I ever sent a child to boarding school it would either be a necessity or through their choice.  And I would never send a child as a day girl if it was obvious they would be excluded because of that.  but I think much of the damamge was done in my first couple of years there - being too young and put up a year.  but the ability to freely explore the outdoors was one I loved....

Moon of Inter-Relations Introduction

I think this is one of the easier Moons to understand from its name.  Everyone knows what inter-relations are and everyone interacts with those around them.  Whether we do it well or not is another matter of course.  I don't think I always do very well at it.

I think I am quite good at understanding people and working them out etc - but only when I take a step back and disengage from my own neediness and fear of not being accepted.  When I let that neediness and fear dominate things go a bit wrong.  I know where this all begins, in childhood, because when it comes down to it, I didn't fit when I was a kid and in many ways I still feel like fitting is something I have to work at in most places.

In many ways I think the way my brain works is far more masculine than feminine.  I am very logical and mathematical and scientific.  I have had to work at understanding and releasing my emotions.  My mind is good at rationalising emotions aways, except of course when you do that, they don't go away, they just get buried and come back and cause more problems later.... 

One example of this is attraction.  I do not believe, personally, in being unfaithful.  When I am in a relationship, I pretty literally, just am not attracted to others.  Except that is a lie, attraction is a natural part of our society and it is everywhere around us.  It has taken me a long time to accept and admit to myself when I do find someone else attractive and to not see that as a threat to my relationship.  It is just there and that's fine, I don't think about it or act on it, obviously, but it is important to not repress these reactions too.

There is one guy at work I have a soft spot for and because of that and how I deal with that, he probably doesn't even think I like him as a person!  Should I not be able to trust enough to be friends with someone I like?  And that for me is where a lot of this all hangs in the balance.  I don't trust.  I don't want to encourage male attention, I don't flirt, except with people who I completely and utterly trust and know have no interest in me in that way (except obviously my husband *laugh*). 

It all comes down to being raped.  People do not behave well so often when lust is involved.  I see it all the time.  I know a very, very attractive man and he is harassed by many of the women he has to interact with.  Luckily he is easy going and gregarious with a good sense of humour.  Even so, sometimes you can see he is uncomfortable.  Sometimes womens behaviour towards him makes me uncomfortable as an observer.  What i find particularly abhorent is how women in senior positions use those positions, intentionally or not.

As a woman, if someone pinched my bum or touched my chest I would be well within my rights to complain and take it much further.  So what gives women a right to do this to men and expect no emotional discomfort?

Anyway, I guess all this is important to me within this Moon.  What else is happening is that my tribe is changing again, one has left and another is about to join.  And who knows how this will effect us, but affect us it shall....

Going back to not belonging.  Being clever and academic and a tomboy meant I never quite fitted.  I didn't have that easy rapport and the more conscious of it I became, the harder I tried and the less I had it.  Family friends always liked my sister better, which I found hard because as a person she is much more difficult than me, but rapport is about surface not about depth and what someone is like to live with.

So at 7 I had my last year at Primary School.  Because I was so unhappy my parents decided that I should join my sister at private school as soon as I was old enough.  I had a wonderful teacher this year and we had a very fun year.  I think we did him a dis-service though.  We always thought I had not learnt as much because I had been having fun because I struggled when I changed schools, except that I accidentally got put up a year when I changed schools *laugh*.  In reality, his teaching methods put me ahead enough that no one realised I had jumped a year....

I remember it being so hot that I had to stand outside in the cool because my nose kept bleeding.  I remember being top of the class with my friend L.  I remember liking horses and I think this was the beginning of that.  I remember devouring books.  I remember a lesson where we did some geometrical construction and really liking that.  I remember learning my times tables and getting stars.

Towards the end of the year I suddenly discovered that I liked playing with the boys and that they were much easier going and relaxed about me joining them.  i remember playing with the two Kevin's and running around through the trees (where we probably should not have been).  The shame of this was, having just probably found my way through, I moved to a girls school.

My next two years of Inter-relationship have been marked by bullying.  At 20 I had succumbed to glandular fever again and was becoming more and more of a wreak as I slowly slid towards my nervous breakdown at 21.  My salvation was again a man and at the beginning of this year I started going out with someone I lived with for several years and will always remember fondly. 

Unfortunately within this social group there was a girl who was rather unpleasant.  She had had a difficult life for sure and was somewhat messed up.  She was tough but mean with a wounded inner child.  She was getting at a friend and my bf and I stood up to her and the lies she was spreading.  Everything got sorted and her part was soon forgotten, but she never forgot or forgave me my part in it.  As I slowly crumbled she picked at my weaknesses.  I am sure I would have had a nervous breakdown no matter what happened, but the exact timing of it was down to her.

Interestingly some of my earlier stronger dreams focused around her and as a result I have a promise that if ever I win the lottery, I shall use some of the money to track her down.  Not to punish her or any other such thing, but because she will need my help and forgiveness.  There is a bond of karma there which I have no intention of taking through to the next life.

My last year of Inter-Relations was the year my Boss started bullying me.  She didn't get me to leave and things are calm between us now.  You might almost think us friends, but don't think i will ever forget my knowledge of what she is truly like.  She too is damaged beyond repair.  More recently I had a dream that told me she would kill herself.  I can well believe that one day it might all get to much for to take and I do not wish for that to happen.

I would like to think that in some way I beat this cycle within this moon and that it won't be like this for me again.  With out a doubt this has been a tough Moon for me previously.  Last year was eventful but alright.  S came to live with us for a month or so due to his own issues.

My Dreamboard for this Moon is not a busy one.  a pod of Dolphins swimming within a wave. A forest canopy.  A sea cliff with a hole in it with wild waves spilling through.  A dark and wrecked city where a fire burns and a shadowy figure keeps warm. A Peacock.  A Red Kite.  Words about hope and fear and new beginnings....

Introduction to Moon of Territoriality

My First Moon of Territoriality fell in my second year at Primary School.  I was not overly happy there.  I liked adults better because I just didn't somehow gel with the other kids.  I have since learnt that this is often a problem for overly intelligent children.  I remember getting on really well with one of the lunch attendants.  I remember the group games that used to get played in the school yard.  I remember not being able to skip very well.  I remember being fascinated by the grasshoppers singing in the grass bank of the middle playground.  I would stand there for ages and patiently catch them in my hands and then try and look at them without letting them hop away.  I never hurt them, I just wanted to look....

The Grasshopper would be a nice totem for me for this Moon, maybe some synchronicity will occur and let me know if it is the Grasshopper, or another totem will step up.  The Grasshopper is a totem for those who dance to their own tune, for visionaries, clairvoyants, artists, dancers and musicians - anyone who sees the world with child-like wonder and awe.  It brings us creative inspiration and giant leaps forward and a sense of adventure.  It is also a symbol of longevity and happiness and can be a messenger from the other side.  He reminds us to listen to our own intuition and those voices within that sing of beauty and creativity.  The Grasshopper grooves to his own tune.

Whether or not he is a totem for this month, he sure had a lot to teach my six year old self if I had known what he was saying....

Things moved on and at 19 I was in my first year at Uni, the first time round.   I was a little goth girl who seemed to get on with everyone and who seemed to have a way with the men.  Inside I was starting to fall to pieces though.  I found it increasingly hard to feel at ease with men.  That fear, once awakened was hard to dispel without alcohol.  I struggled with my studies as I started to sink under the weight of Glandular Fever again.  My spirit had shattered into a million pieces and I was a puppet still walking.  I held it together until the Moon of Surrender though....

My most recent year of this Moon though was the one in which I came to terms with not having made it as  a Teacher and started my current job.  My plea at that time was for a job where I could be myself and whether or not it was what I expected, that is exactly what I got.  It is also when I started blogging and that has been such a wonderful road to self-discovery, learning and friendships.

So what do I think this Moon means?  Well looking at what MaryRose has to say, it seems to be about personal space and how we protect and maintain our personal space. Lisa has written about the boundaries between the territories of the masculine and the feminine and how the two interact across those boundaries.  She laso mentioned that one year this Moon was very much about Death.  I guess the Dead and the Living are in different territories.  So this Moon is not just about our territory and it's boundaries but the way in which our turf interacts with what is beyond our boundary.

The lonely child had her turf but walls other children could not cross and she turned to nature.  At 19 she had boundaries of fear and alcohol was the key to the door through.  In my 30s it was about upping sticks and moving my turf somewhere where it fit better, where I could be me.  Be interesting to see what aspect of this Moon comes up over the next few weeks.

Moon of Omnipotence Introduction

Looking back at this year, it has often been a year slightly out of step, a year where I have done something different that does not quite fit the flow of the rest of my life somehow.

When I was little I lived in a hamlet, halfway between two villages.  Village A was where we psychologically belonged, our hamlet took it's name from this village and it was where we went to Church and socialised.  But where we lived fell in the catchment for Village B. 

Out of choice my family took me to Play School in village A.  My Mum worked their too and this was a good palce and a happy time.  But then all my friends left.  The school in Village A took them earlier than the school in Village B and I was alone, a big fish in a little pond, which to be honest, i quite enjoyed.

The problem came the following year when I hit 5 and entered both my Year of Omnipotence and my new school.  I didn't fit.  i didn't have pre-existing friendships from Play School.  I was overly clever and preferred the friendship of adults to those of the children around me.  i didn't know how to breach that gulf and I was desperately lonely and unhappy.  This year more so than the ones that follow I think.  but it was certainly the beginning of a hard time for me.

My next Year of this Moon was hard too.  It was my year out.  I moved out of home, left school and started my first job days before my 18th birthday.  In some ways it was a great year, I did very well.  I received a prize for the project I completed.  I did many fun things.  I had a circle of friends who liked and valued me.  But I was really, really lonely, because I could not be with my friends all the time.

I think it was in this year that my dysfunctional attitude towards relationships began to surface, out of loneliness.  Later in the year, I entered a bad relationship with an older man who pursued me at work.  He tried to dominate me and control me and separate me from my friends.  When I left him, he sought to dominate me one last time and raped me. 

I accept it would have looked different from his point of view.  I was in a bad way when I got home that night, severely tired and dehydrated.  I remember very little but I wonder if he gave me strong painkillers.  it is only now in later years that I know anything with Codeine in it makes me feel very out of it and sleepy.

Anyway, a bad way to go and one that that rang down through later years.  It is obvious to me now that this was (is?) a broken moon from my childhood, that loneliness and a desire to belong and a lack of value for myself began there and echoed on through.  I may have repaired the damage from the events the first time round, but I had not repaired the Moon and it blindsided me again the second time through.

So the third time...  This was the year I suddenly decided to go and do a Teacher Training course.  Well no, I decided that in the Year of Value and did it during Omnipotence.  I didn't make a good teacher in the way our school system requries.  It was not for me, but this year had good things too.  it took me back to school, I got to examine the school system again and my place within it and what it does to children.  It seems blatantly obvious now that this was all about healing this Moon.

I realised I loved school for it's learning, I loved learning about all the different subjects.  it reintroduced me to Art and History and helped me understand Religous Education as stories.  I learnt some cool things and valuable skills.  i realised I was very good at telling stories - I love storytime with kids -  I do all the voices and everything....

And this was the year that the Student who reminded me of the Wife in the previous post was in my life....  Kind of curious too that she should appear just as we re-enter Omnipotence, during Value.  Maybe the damage in these moons was due to a slight weakness in my Moon of Value.  Certainly this character has less power to hurt me as I value myself.  And it makes me think I should include my nasty Ex in this character type, which had not occurred to me before because he is male and therefore does not have all the same physical charactersitcs in an obvious way.....

I am not sure how easy it is to get across the realisations I have just had with regards to a personality type, Value and Omnipotence.  Anyway.... no biggie...  I know now.  And last time through, loneliness was definately not an issue.  But this is definately a year that sweeps me away in a different direction, when the tides of fate do their thing.  But I don't think it is Broken any more, but I guess I won't know for sure until I reach 44....

This also explains my Dreamboard.  I did one yesterday.  In the bottom left, is an Erratic ( a boulder dropped by a glacier left out of place) balnced on a smaller rock with a background of stars.  In the top right is a wind chislled column of rock in a desert with stars behind it.  Top left is primitive sacred cave paintings of hands.  Then there is a group of people sat out in the wilds round a camp fire and the way they sit has me in mind of the way the buddhist is sat in prayer in another picture.  Then there is a husky dogs face and words, such as help, healing, home...  But the thing that really adds the edge for me is the picture in the middle, obscured by others so you might not even realise that what it shops is the black wave of a tsunami breaking and sweeping all before it.

I had already figured that the dreamboard concerned fate and destiny.  The things that get left behind after aeons, the things that survive.  And how there is peace in this, but sometimes too, things get swept away and destroyed, that I get swept away.

And looking at how this Moon sweeps into my life it makes sense now....  I make big decisions that sweep me away, and did I ever have much choice anyway?  Were those decisions destined?  Impotence (the negative of this Moon) is as much present as Omnipotence.  And loneliness sings under there too....  Do those rocks sometimes feel lonely by themselves after all around has gone and they still endure?

No wonder the coming of this Moon gives me fears of being swept away by fate of being powerless, a niggle.  I will surrender to the wave that may or may not come, and trust that whatever of me is left standing will be as it should be.

The Ghost in the Dream

This post is a follow on from a couple of previous posts A Relative Fashion and J Donald.

So the saga continues. Although the depression lifted, the bad sleep and strange dreams have continued. Maybe I should have been making an effort to remember them, but at 4 in the morning when a horrible image is stuck in your head and you have to get back to sleep and go to work the following day, forgetting it as quickly as possible is definately the goal!

One image has stayed with me this week and I have not been able to leave it in the dreaming at all. A sister watching her brother being burned alive. I got to watch it in horrific detail. It took a couple of hours for me to get back to sleep and I could not forget, no matter how hard I tried.

With a nice bit of timing, Wheelkeeper wrote this post about a ghost she had been assisting and with the assistance of Lisa as well, things have become clearer. The ghost can call to us in the dream and call us to a dream realm where we can receive messages and interact, if they are a loved one, a ghost of one of our own past lives or if we are a Keeper of the Dead.

I have no evidence to suggest I am a Keeper of the Dead, this is after all my first ghost. I am not sure if he counts as a loved one, no living relative of mine ever met him after all, he is a Great Great Great Grandfather. Not sure about him being a past life either. Not sure how I would feel if he was a past life.

I mean after all, killing surely acquires a fair bit of bad karma! And he in all likelihood killed a lot of people. Then there is the other side of the coin, he achieved so very much in his life, he came from nothing and climbed his way up, was respected and rewarded for this and was very, very formidable. I admire him but I am not sure I can live up to him. I think he would look at my lack of fitness, my messy house and start barking off orders....

But I found this article on soldiers and karma. It seems that there is a view that intention is key with karma. If your intention is to do your job well and with honour and to protect your country, then that is fine. Intending to go out and kill people, to rape and pillage, to do bad things is going to accrue a lot of bad karma.

I am currently reading a book, Earth Medicine by Jamie Sams with a reading each morning. This mornings reading was all about honour. To honor the deeds of another is to show appreciation for their contribution. To bring honor to our country is to give of ourselves above and beyond what is normally expected. To honor the self requires sacrifice - to make sacred our roles abilities and talents. If we share these gifts with those we serve, without desire for reward and with an open heart, we will receive joy as a reward.

This is such an appropriate reading for today! Because honor is so very much what he was about. He did his job, with all of himself, all of his ability and he was prepared to make the biggest sacrifice. If he was ordered to do terrible things or they were part of battle there is no dishonor. The fact these things haunted him is a credit to him. Maybe there were things he did that he could have done differently, maybe some images would never leave, maybe there was guilt while he was alive, I doubt he would ever have admitted to it. I can see how that guilt would remain as unresolve in some one like him.

Any individual acts he committed and their attendant unresolve is not what he has to deal with now. They will be played out in life, in the relationships he has with those people. It is his guilt he has to accept and let go of.

Beginning

Wapeyit of Rattling the Bones posted a beautiful post today... It made me want to tell the story of my own beginning. And more importantly, to ask my Mother about my beginning and to write it down so I do not forget....

One day, as my Mother neared the end of her allotted nine months carrying me throughout the hottest Summer in living memory, she went to the clinic for a check up. They found her blood pressure was up and told her to go home, collect some things and come back again, which she did. On her return, they connected her up to a drip and gave her pain killers and such like and began the process of inducing me.

My Father came from work to the hospital to see my Mother and make sure she was alright. He arrived, the nurse checked his name, led him to a door, told him to put a gown on and ushered him inside. In those days Fathers did not tend to watch their babies being born and it was certainly not something my Dad would have been eager to see! But nether the less, there he was..... Much to his surprise!

I was very tiny, not quite five pounds, so they put me in a prem unit for a few days but apparently I gained weight quickly (*sigh* I still do!). I was only a week, maybe two premature and my health was fine.

My Mum does not remember too much of my birth and has very little idea what time of day it was even! Those drugs will do that to you....

I would like to remember and record more of my childrens births for them.... More the stories of them, than a physical video however!

Digging in the Dirt

Sometimes life throws you a few different strands all at one time and because they come close together they can touch and recombine and form a new piece of thread within the weave.

Thread One
I had an overwhelming urge to listen to a particular song on the way home, Peter Gabriel's Digging in the Dirt. It had been an interesting day, lots of stress flying around and I wanted a high energy song to shout out the lyrics to on the way home. I find dark, emotional, loud music cathartic. They make me happy. All that energy and release. Not sad, not dark, not to me.

and I got to wondering about the lyrics. It has two distinct emotional overtones. One angry, raging and the other softer, melancolic.

Something in me, dark and sticky
All the time it's getting strong
No way of dealing with this feeling
Can't go on like this too long

This time you've gone too far
This time you've gone too far
This time you've gone too far
I told you
I told you
I told you
I told you
This time you've gone too far
This time you've gone too far
This time you've gone too far
I told you
I told you
I told you
I told you

Don't talk back,
Just drive the car
Shut your mouth
I know what you are
Don't say nothing
Keep your hands on the wheel
Don't turn around
This is for real
Digging in the dirt
Stay with me, I need support
I'm digging in the dirt
To find the places i got hurt
To open up the places i got hurt

The more I look, the more I find
As I close on in, I get so blind
I feel it in my head, i feel it in my toes
I feel it in my sex, that's the place it goes

Digging in the dirt
Stay with me, I need support
I'm digging in the dirt
To find the places i got hurt
To open up the places i got hurt

Digging in the dirt
To find the places we got hurt
Digging in the dirt
To find the places we got hurt
Digging in the dirt
To find the places we got hurt
Digging in the dirt
To find the places we got hurt

And I started to get bits of meaning and so I read other people's interpretations online and I have a slightly different view on it.... (not veyr different but just a little). Cycles of abuse. Abused become abuser. The angry bits are him as abuser and abused both at once. The sadder parts are him as himself, dealing with and looking at himself.

Then I watched the video.



and it makes me think further on this. There are sequences with him as an adult, swatting flies around a woman, which looks very like domestic violence. There are sequences of him as a child, a victim of an adult, just like him. The child becomes buried in the dirt. There are also sequences of him as an adult buried in the dirt. At one point, mushrooms grow above him and spell out help. It all speaks so loud to me.

The chains of karma. But the thing about this song is that it is a cry for help, for change, for the breaking of the chain. It is a release. A breaking of the chain. In the video, the man ends up on top of the dirt, wearing a bright white suit. Clean. Free. I know many people find this song dark but I never have, there is a joy in that breaking of the chain, a less than shining joy, but a joy all the same.

Thread 2
And then i read the lovely Suzi's post of today. Ah karma...... breaking those chains. it helped me understand the song, put the pieces together. It made me think about my own life too and some of the things I have read about karma.

Thread 3
The Deverry books by Katherine Kerr are a fantasy series, a long one. They tell the story of a group of souls that reincarnate and slowly work through the karma of a situation that was mishandled in one of their lives together. The thing is, that original situation and it's effects has a ripple effect outwards, so there are a whole host of situations that develop as a result throughout their lives and those ripples impact others and further than that, countries and..... The stories are a celtic knot, the lives flowing through and around, back and forth.

So where does this leave me? What am I thinking about right now? I am wondering if the chain of my own abuse is alive and well or if it has been broken. I wonder at that chain, I think the link had already been weakened by the actions of us both in previous lives or maybe as a result of the ay we chose to live in this life. It could have been worse.

it's effect on me though was pretty catastrophic. I turned to drugs to disguise the fact my world had fallen apart, nothing in it really made sense any more. I eventually had a nervous breakdown and my glandular fever / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome flared up again. I got help and I read and I rebuilt my world, block by painful block. Being a logical sort, I had to reconstruct my understanding of how the world works. That narrow Christian ethic I grew up with had made my world too black and white to cope with grey.

I have reached a point where the memory no longer hurts. Where the changes in my life wrought by the consequences of it have ceased to be negative and i can see they have bought me to be a person I am happy with, living in a way I am happy with, and my life is pretty good. and I would not be here without that one singular event. Is this enough to break the chain? Is this forgiveness?

but the dirt, it clings. It is hard to let go and where does the dirt end and me begin? Am I raggedy tree climbing urchin with dirt on my chins as I climb the tree of life? Or do I need a damn good bath still, to make me clean? the effects linger on, maybe they always will. F and I feel their echoes in our relationship, the difference is love and care. Those ripples are something we face together as best we can.

I am not sure I will ever be able to listen to Digging in the Dirt in the same way again. i won't enjoy it any less. I may even enjoy it any more, as i belt out those words. release. clean. free.

Another Day...

My funny mood of the day never went away. Indecisive and not very easy. Uncomfortable. Depressive. My horoscope warned me of this and also advised me not to allow the mood to let me miss opportunities. I think I did.

We could have gone out but I avoided it like the plague. I felt low and tired and icky.

In my continuing discomfort of the day I finally pulled a couple of cards and I got the Heron and the Rabbit. The Fear Caller, one of my totems, is all about dwelling on the negative and calling it to you. The Heron is a mirror and helps us find our truth by looking at our feelings, getting stuck is a sign of being over-critical, blaming life or others is a sign of lack of courage.

Today I didn't have the strength to live life. Am I being hard on myself over it? No idea. Somedays it feels hard. Are these days caused by my own fear? Or are they caused by my lack of energy? The last few days have been so full and last weekend was a full one to, maybe today was a kick back from that growth? Maybe I am just tired, maybe it was just too much.

The only thing that is certain is that tomorrow is another day and I have learnt from experience that sleep is what clears these moods when they come. Tomorrow I will feel differently.

I suffered from depression, sometimes related to my Chronic Fatigue, sometimes related to a bad relationship and it's after effects. I became pretty agrophobic at one point and eventually had a nervous breakdown at 21. One thing I learnt from all that is that everything changes, things can not stay the same, and this was a great comfort. If you hit rock bottom, and believe me I was there, any lower and I would not be here today, knowing that things will change, really understanding that, becomes a comfort. Time takes things and distance helps, time gives distance.

So I know that tomorrow, is really, another day.

Free my Body

Sometimes when you are looking for one thing, you find another. This happened to me last night. i was curious about Jamie Sams, author of Medicine Cards and Dancing the Dream. I have questions, lots of questions. So I thought I would hunt and see what I could find.

I didn't expect to find an explanation that matches my own viewpoint on my illnesses and takes it on further.

Stealth Viruses

This view believes that many illnesses such as Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue and more have a viral component and that these viruses can lie dormant in the body and are very difficult to spot. They also recur.

I had glandular fever twice in my teens. It dragged on and was very much Chronic Fatigue. Over time I have gotten better and I am almost normal now. I get tired. I sleep for 9 hours a night generally.

When I first met F I was napping every weekend and sometimes after work. 6 years before that, my day began when my boyfriend got home and ended when he went to bed - it was that short. I am improving. This year I have managed to avoid catching the cold that have lain everyone I work with low. I survived the last stock check pretty well.....

Twenty years.

I was told it was caused by Epstein barr virus by doctors then I met a homeopathist who used electro acupuncture and she confirmed the Epstein barr virus diagnosis. She gave me doses of the virus as a antidote or vaccine to show my body how to deal with it, how to look for the virus. It worked and my improvement was marked. But long term, the recovery of my body has been slow. But at least my body has been able to recover.

And here I am reading of Stealth Viruses. I didn't expect to find that she is a sufferer or that vaccines manufactured using animal proteins is one way these viruses have been spread. The recent MMR vaccine Autism scare / case is an example of stealth virus infections caused in this way.

Reading about how things have come along since my last bout and all the surrounding symptoms makes me sad. Even things like my feeling cold and my dry eyes are symptoms. It also makes me wonder if I will ever fully recover. It seems full recovery tends to occur within five years if it is going to. Some people gradually recover but never completely get better. Others never get better or get worse. i think I have gradually gotten better....

So if I never get fully better? I guess I know this. I can deal with my life as it is now. I dealt with it when it was worse. I will deal with whatever else comes my way.

There is also a link with depression. It seems if you are depressed before you get it, they won't diagnose CFS but I became depressed shortly after. I have suffered from depression on and off ever since. Whatever cahnged in me, seemingly rather suddenly this Winter, has resulted in me feeling that that cloud has lifted. Maybe it is the virus lessening it's hold a little more.

The virus has had huge effects on my life. It has affected my abilities, the way I cope with life, every decision I have ever made really, since I became ill. I live with it and I count myself lucky that I have gotten better. Maybe one day science will have an answer and my body will be free.

Chains and Riches

Strange dreams last night.

But I guess I asked for them. Before I went to sleep some words drifted in to my head, and I spoke them inside my head in that way that has intention, half spell, half prayer. Words I can't remember now, about walking with the Goddess in my dreams.

So I guess I got what I asked for.

I dreamt I was a little girl, washed out to see, all alone in the ocean, floating on a mattress, clinging to a case full of money. I was rescued by a fishing vessel but refused to let go of that case....

I dreamt of a group of people, flitting from character to character. A man left a nightclub and discovered a girl chained underneath, sold into slavery. He tried to rescue her, to talk to her. Another of the group was with another woman and was confronted by the club owner. The other woman, who was not me, started chanting and so the group of two began chanting together. I don't remember the words but there was something about being free, freeing the woman. A spell cast in my sleep..... While the Goddess walked with me....

I woke with the Tears for Fears song, Woman in Chains in my head. Later came the thought that my inner child is a hoarder. I was a hoarder. I didn't want to ruin things so I often didn't use them, kept them pristine and unsullied.... Pretty pads unused so as not to ruin them. The things that lived under the bed - there was a household myth that if you lost something, then you should look under my bed....

I hoard. I collect. I want more. I want to keep. letting go of books..... wanting more music than I can ever listen to on my ipod. Throwing things away..... but at the same time I know I can live without things - I did for some time when all my posessions went in to storage, including the ones that were not supposed to, I had a couple of days clothes for a month....

I need to think on this more. I am not sure what it is I am hoarding exactly. What is it my inner child considers to be riches exactly? What could tempt her to let go? What can unlock that woman's chains, make her let go of her slavery?

Trans-

The feelings of last night are still running through me. I slept funny last night and had odd dreams. I don't feel rested or joyful this morning but I do feel calmer. The storm has abated a little but is still there brewing away.

Just before bed I did a quick reading, just two cards, one for the masculine and one for the feminine. The masculine pulled the snake and the feminine the frog. A really interesting pairing, transmutation and cleansing. i don't feel these two cards are at odds with each other.

The snake is an interesting card and different to how I imagined. The snake is a rare and powerful totem and I am glad it is not mine. Snakes have the power to transmute all poisons and that it seems is what I must do now, I must take this thing that is getting to me and turn it into something else, something better.

The frog is all about cleansing and also a bit about transformation as well. Letting go in a more gentle way than the snake. Taking time and space to breath.

I know things are flowing from me here. It occurs to me that the child inside me liked being alone to climb trees, catch grasshoppers amongst the tall grasses, read books, draw, build dens. The problem was my child was too much alone and didn't meet others like her.

Maybe if I had gone to a bigger school, maybe there would have been others. Maybe not. In fact really, it is only through this wonderful land of blog that I have met many like me (though of course all rather different). Before this online adventure began, I only knew of one and an acquaintance from years before and I reconnected via facebook and discovered we were kindred spirits as well... So two, sort of.

Not good odds for me to find one like me at school really. Although looking on facebooks uggests that one or two people were like me and I never knew.... One girl in the year below has definitely walked an alternative path. I used to play with her and sometimes went to her house and rode her horse. But she was the year below.

Age is a powerful separator for the young. It should not be. This is what caused most of my problems. I had friends, just not with me in my year group. Both older and younger.

Even now, with my old college friends, I walk with the group but I am separate, I always was..... I had other groups of friends as well and walked several paths at the same time. My magpie blood and probably a bit of coyote too.

Oh and I know my ninth animal too... i always did... but that will have to come after work....

Outside of Love

I feel as if I have opened a rich vein of things to dig at, but I have to dig past the things I have already looked at and examined to get to where the trouble lies. I have no idea what the little nugget of pain that will not leave my Inner Child alone is, so I will just keep writing about the episodes of my life that come to mind and keep going and going until I get there.... It is however nice to feel that I am writing about the things that made things better as well as the things that made it worse. This is not digging for the sake of oh woe is me, honest!

I have trouble remembering when exactly the glandular fever first began. Life got very fuzzy, fuzzier than normal. I remember I was 14, just started my GCSE's, so I guess sometime between my birthday in September and the following Easter. Right slap bang in the middle of this time is one of those little life stories...

I had had boyfriends before and I had had minor crushes before, but this is the story of my first love I guess. Let's call him A as that comes first.

My sister had her birthday in January and for the first and last time, my parents decided to open the house to a group of drinking teenagers. The lounge carpet was being cleaned and all the furniture was moved out. My parents barricaded themselves in the end room with the TV and the dogs and we had the run of the rest of the downstairs.

My sister has similar music tastes etc to me so her group of friends was exactly the sort of people I liked, goths, rockers and other alternative sorts. Although my sister was never particularly wild, she floated on the edge of that scene and some of the people who came were a little wilder than her.

I met a man. (Obviously) I don't remember too much of the evening (how frustrating is it to try digging away to get to the hurt when you just can't remember it all clearly?). I remember he gave me a key ring with a rude but complimentary message that I shall not repeat here. I remember kissing him outside and it being so cold we went in to the outside toilet (*laugh*) but my Mum decided to come out with the dogs and to use the facilities (*double laugh*). She was a little surprised to find me in there with a young man......

He was an arty type and oh so different to me. i think he was perhaps on the side of art that is a little dark and that I don't always get. He tole me some story about some art project involving syringes and bits of animal or some such. He was cool. He was good looking. He was slightly wild. He liked me.

At least I think he did. I remember there being some issue. I didn't hear from him I don't think. Someone else had sent me a story to read and I sent a letter back with it via my Sister. Neither my Sister or my Mum were overly keen, hence the need for sneakery.

We spoke on the phone a few times and he made me a mix tape. The tape introduced me to some great music, definitely alternative and to be honest, it helped shape my musical taste. I can't remember too much of what we talked about. I think his home life was very different to mine.

He told me about a party in town and eventually my Sister and her boyfriend agreed to take me. We arranged to meet at a pub in town. We got there and he was off his trolley and my Sister and her bloke were not convinced it was just alcohol. He went a bit odd and didn't say a lot and gave my sister some odd directions that no one was over keen to follow... and that was that....

My Sister and my Mum won that round.

A few years later I was at college and let loose on town myself. That same pub became my stomping ground. One of the same group of friends remained at college while I was there. And A was occasionally in the same place when he was home from Uni. It was my turn to go funny and I never spoke to him, even though his friend said he would have liked it if I had spoken to him.

Thing is. I am never sure how much all this affected me. How much it tied in to my glandular fever. I remember seeing the Doctor and he started asking me questions about depression. I did tell him about A I remember. He prescribed me Amitriptyline. I was 14......

I later discovered that amitriptyline and glandular fever do not mix.

This was all around the time that my health went down hill. I may have been ill before hand but I don't really remember.

I think I lost something important in all this. I wish I had been free to meet him as I wished but we lived in the country and I had no means of getting anywhere near him without help. I know it was all timing and I know my Mum and my Sister wanted the best for me, but I wanted him and there has always been wild child lurking inside me. It just had to wait till I left home to get out....

I also see all the hallmarks of how much my relationships with my Mother and Sister were dishonest and damaged me and my confidence. But it was mostly their caring that did it. I can also see how my teenage years were troubled because of my age. My age meant I couldn't hang around with the people I wanted to or do the things I wanted to. In some ways I had a lot of freedom but it was carefully controlled.

Guardian Dog Angel

When I was about twelve, we had one dog, an old Welsh Border Collie who lived in the garden, got too hot if you brought him in and was not a people dog. We had lost another dog a while back. She was a sweetie....

So one day we were driving from school to my Gran's and we were going down a tiny country lane. We saw the car in front slow and then drive on and as we reached where it had sloed, we saw why. There was a dog. A fawn and white skeleton of a greyhound. She was sniffing cars as they passed.

She sniffed our car as we slowed and then stopped. She was so ... gentle. She was cut and bleeding in places and really needed a good meal, well a lot of good meals. She quietly got in the back of the car and sat next to me.

We visited a friend with a kennels on the way home and she knew of no missing dogs in the area. We took her home and fed her and later on took her to the police kennels. I remember leaving her there. She howled as we left her.

She had impressed us all with her gentleness. She was a beautiful spirit and it was clear to see.

No one came forward to claim her, so after her week, she was going to be put down. My parents stepped in and arranged to pick her up and mys sister and I were delighted.

Except my mum got lost on the way to the kennels and was unable to pick her up. I remember being terrified that she would be put down as we had not got there in time. She was kept alive as they knew she was wanted and the day after she came home.

I have a really, really bad memory so i don't remember all the details of how it all came about but she became my friend. She was mine. If I called her, she always came, no matter what was going on, unless it involved food.

If she knew I was awake she would whine and howl at the bottom of the stairs till the door opened and she could get to me. She always knew when I was unhappy, even before I got home. She loved me unconditionally.

When I became ill with glandular fever, she was my companion. I was not up to a lot at that time, I saw few people. I slept. And she slept with me. I would walk up the nearby hill and she would accompany me. Those walks and her company kept me sane.

When she eventually died, i felt her spirit visit me later that same day. She was not a simple dog,s he was something much more and I still believe that. I think she was a guardian sent to help me through tough times. How much worse would my loneliness and all that fed the growth of the Outsider have been without her?

Little Dog and Big Dog, for all their love and everything else and all that I love(d) them and adore(d) them, that something that she had is missing. She was more than a dog. I thank spirit or whatever you wish to call it for sending her to me when I needed her.

I could tell you more stories about her, how she used to raid bins, could jump the highest of fences, grinned, and turned out to be pregnant when we got her....

I am not sure how far and where exactly to dig to release the hold of the Outsider on my Inner Child, so i will keep writing till I feel it.... And it does not hurt to share a little gratitude for the good things on the way.

Learning to be Outside

I am pretty tired after my weekends work. By the end of Friday i will have worked 19 days with only one day off during that time. 144 and a half hours. But anyway. It will be next weekend before I am back on form I suspect but I am still thinking about the Outsider. I need to delve in to my past and see if I can free my Inner Child a little as this feeling of being the Outsider has sometimes drowned her.

I am the youngest of two and we grew up in the country. There were not many children living near by. My Sister and I had an odd relationship I guess, I was laid back and let her take control but really, I liked adult company more. I liked talking to adults and always did. I had no fear and I had a disturbing desire to wander off and find nice adults to talk to, much to the chagrin of my parents.

I went to playgroup in a nearby village and my Mum also worked there some days. Our hamlet was linked to the village I went to playschool in but was the opposite side of the main road so when school came, my sister and I went to school in a different village. At playschool I found myself deserted by my playmates as the school they were going to, took them some months earlier. So I was suddenly the oldest.

And then I went to school to. I knew none of the children there and had none of the history of playschool with anyone and none of the established friendships. I never really settled in my primary school. I never really had many friends. I only remember playing with two girls. I remember being bad at skipping, but also that the playground attendants used to lead group games and that although I was well liked, this meant I was not alone. One of the lunch time people really liked me and even gave me a present one time.

I was a tomboy. I was one of the oldest and tallest in my class. I remember towards the end of my time that I started playing with two boys. I suspect that if I had stayed, I would have ended up playing with the boys more than the girls.

My Sister meanwhile had finished her time at primary school and been sent to a local private school. This was a good move for her. She was shy and less academic and the school gave her a sheltered place to grow and learn. She had a long term best friend there and a group of friends, mostly day girls like us rather than boarders. (Her best friend eventually betrayed her and they fell out and I can barely remember why. My Sister then felt betrayed because I remained friends with her)

I was so unhappy at my school that my parents decided to take me out early and send me to the same school as my sister as soon as they could. Unfortunately I was put up a year and the school had no idea. I went from being one of the oldest to being the youngest. I was behind and tested for dyslexia etc because of this and given extra lessons. I grew up thinking I was less than intelligent.

I was bad at sport and I still did not gel with people at my school. I did not have a best friend until many years later. She was a special young lady, several years older, older than my sister and lacking friends herself. We probably had about the same mental age, but she was a good and true soul (and probably still is).

In the years before that I didn't have a friend and I was desperate for one. I would always volunteer to show new pupils around, hoping desperately that one of them would like me enough to be my friend. I wasn't disliked, I just wasn't a part of things. I didn't have much in common with these girls I found myself with.

The biggest difference was that most of them boarded. I didn't really understand that my apartness was not my fault I don't think. The boarders were there together at night and the weekends so of course they formed strong bonds with each other. In my year, the handful of day girls did not form a strong group like they had in my sisters year. I think the girls I got on best with were the small group of Chinese girls but I was never one of them either.

My best friend left. I decided to join Young Farmers or YFC, a countryside youth movement. Once I had made friends there my Sister came and joined as well and then her group of friends from school started to go out with us as well. This was one of the best things I ever did in my childhood I think. At that time the YFC was a much more diverse organisation than it is now because there were more older members than young, so I had plenty of adult company and I loved it all.

I think my class mates were probably jealous that I was going ou drinking and kissing boys while they were locked away in school. I am sure that some of the most popular girls would have loved to have been asked to my house for the weekend. But I have a mile wide stubborn streak and I refused to ask any of them, they had left it a little late to try and form friendships and their attempts were obvious in their purpose.

Things would have continued getting better I guess, as my reliance on school lessened and my life outside of school bloomed. At fourteen I became ill with glandular fever and my social life went away over night. I couldn't even cope with school a lot of the time. The next year were pretty lonely I guess, I don't remember much except sleeping.

I got better and started work at a local restaurant. I was doing a job I legally should not have been, serving alcohol. I didn't look or act my age and so the customers sometimes behaved a little inappropriately towards me *laugh*. Then my school started to shut.

My parents offered to send me as a boarder to the new school they were all going to but I refused and went to a local college instead. I was fed up with snobbishness for my school had been firmly divided in terms of money. My Mum worked at the school and some of the children came from rich families.

I loved college and it came as a shock to discover that there were people like me and that people liked me. Suddenly I was very popular and I had plenty of boys interested. Although i had had boyfriends before it was always tricky because I was younger than everyone else, but here were hundreds of boys my age. These were two great years.

This is a very superficial story of my life up until I turned 18. Some of the issues. I think some memories need to be looked at in a lot more detail. This doesn't get too far really as it is well turfed ground. I need to dig deeper into these years and ones that came after. I expect it might be quite dull! You may wish to avoid these posts....

Outside(r)

There is some meat here. An old niggle. Something that causes discomfort. Something I must dig out and examine. Old issues that need to be set in letters to make their outlines clear so they can catch the breeze and fly.

I guess anyone who has been through any sort of counselling episode / deep loking at the self or anything of that type in any way knows, where there is discomfort or pain is where you need to go.

So I am going to go here and follow it back, all the way back. I am going to look at why htereis always something of the outsider lurking about me. In my head. I know I am not an outsider. I have many places I belong. I know this. But the child inside me, she feels alone and outside and different.

And just thinking on this for a few minutes, there are a lot of threads here to pull. It might take some time to write and examine and mull over. But I think it long overdue.

Strange how a blog can become therapy. Airing the intensely private in public, swathed in anonyminity.

But for now, work calls.

Subversion in the School

I went to a very Christian girls school. It was a boarding school, although I didn't board. One of the most important things in a school like this was keeping us girls safe and away from boys. It was for parents to decide which boys were suitable, not the school. The school also had to think about men, a school full of sequestered teenage girls is many a mans fantasy and some of those girls were very hormonal and men might not have safe from them....

Not surprisingly, there were not too many male members of staff. Those that there were tended to be very respectable married men. Except one. Well i am sure he would have been married if it had been legal back then.... He had a long term partner and the school turned a very Christian blind eye. After all, us girls were definitely safe with him.

I have a handful of vague memories. I so wish my memory was better.... He leant me a book once and I remember when I gave it back to him he asked me what I thought. I have a vague memory of being non-committal in that annoying teenage way. I don't think he ever leant me a book again but it didn't matter.

The thing is, teenagers often are too embarassed of emotion, of adults to be entirely honest with their thoughts and feelings. Sometimes they don't work them out until later and then the moment is gone.

The author of that book is still one of my favourite, a couple of decades later... And I wish I could tell him. But he and his partner bought a bar somewhere exotic......

Thing is though, he saw something in me to lend me that book. Sheri S. Tepper is an author whose books are often feminist and political in nature. She uses fantasy to really dig at humanity and see what lies underneath. When you worked in such a school, to lend such a book to a pupil.... Me, not a different one. He saw a seed in me and I would like to think it grew. I have no idea what he would make of my pagan faith.

So many teachers had an impact on me, often in tiny ways. Some affected me without me ever being able to recall why and what. But sometimes the tiniest things have the biggest echoes down through time - like a book - that authors thoughts have surely helped shape my own.