Little Acts Of Kindness

I sometimes despair of the world.  There is so much greed.  Young people are obsessed with how they look and not who they are.  Older adults are obsessed with what they have, what car they drive and where they go on holiday so that they can brag to their friends.  We’re often too busy in our overly-full-of-stuff lives to bother much with our neighbours or vulnerable family members.  Gone are the days where we all used to not have much of anything but looked out for each other nonetheless.

Despite huge need at times, I haven’t exactly been on my nearest and dearest’s radar (parents aside).  It’s probably my own fault.  I am fiercely independent and don’t want to be treated as a victim, because I don’t feel like a victim.  I don’t want pity or charity, though loving kindness is always welcomed.  I appear to have it all together and it takes a keen eye to see through the act I put on every day.

When I joined my Camera Club I struggled.  It was mostly full of retired professional men who had formerly been Vets or Solicitors and who seemed to have money to burn, or middle aged women who were married to rich men and had holiday homes in Barbados and Spain.  They were buying the latest cameras, lenses and equipment and I, stony broke, was making do with a nine year old 3rd hand camera off Ebay.

My weird and creative pictures often weren’t much liked by the old male judges who preferred photos of steam trains or lighthouses, and at one stage I threatened to quit because I felt like I couldn’t keep up with the rich members and the judges hated my stuff in any event.  I emailed the competition secretary and told him of my decision but instead of just accepting it he helped me.  We ‘talked’ for hours via email, with him encouraging me at every step of the way, building my confidence and listening patiently to my grievances.  The outcome was that the way the competitions were run was changed for the whole club, and a big effort was made to invite female and younger people to judge our images which made for a more level playing field for everyone.

I’d not even spoken to the competition secretary, John, before then.  He was 70, very shy and I hadn’t taken much notice of him to be honest.  But as I got to know him I realized here was a man kind to the bottom of his soul, who lived with honesty and integrity, who saw both sides of the argument, who was quiet and unassuming yet had the strength to stand up for what he believed in if the need arose.  We got on like a house on fire and have regularly emailed each other ever since, though we still don’t speak much at Club as John’s shyness gets in the way.

This week there was an offer online for some software.  I can’t afford it, but with $200 off the recommended price I couldn’t resist buying it anyway!  But then I discovered that it won’t work with my editing software, Photoshop Elements 11, because it’s too old.  John had found the same thing, so he upgraded his Photoshop to Elements 13 and offered to let me put a copy of his new Elements 13 on my machine.  Knowing that you can only do this a limited number of times and that John had more than one laptop, I emailed my thanks but told him to put the software on his own machines and maybe I’d ask Santa for the upgrade for Christmas this year.

This morning, I logged on to my emails to find a message from John which read: “Jak.  Thanks for making the correct moral decision.  I have now ordered you Elements 13 from Amazon which will be delivered to your home next week.  Please accept with my best wishes.”  I feel tearful even now just thinking of his kindness.  Not only that but my lack of greed in not taking one of his licences, even though I really wanted and needed it, had been acknowledged and appreciated.  I can’t possibly accept his offer and have already emailed to say I will reimburse him, but I suspect he won’t accept.

As I said earlier, I haven’t been helped much in my life but now and again someone comes along who sees past my pride and bravado and recognises that I struggle.  As a kid it was a couple of teachers, who realized that being a very bright kid from a dysfunctional working class family was difficult and who gave me extra help to achieve my potential.  As an adult, it’s been a couple of people who have realized that living alone with debilitating illness and a lack of money is challenging and have helped me in subtle, and not so subtle, ways.   They will never know the difference their belief in me and their acts of kindness have made to my life and to my faith in human nature.

Nearly all the people who have helped me have been men, middle aged or older.   I don’t know why that should be, but they just seem able to see past the strong, independent, capable face I show to the world and recognize that maybe my life is harder than I let on.  Maybe they just see that, despite my own hardships (or probably because of them) I try to be a kind and thoughtful person and they want to be kind back.  I don’t really understand the reasons why women haven’t helped me, even as a kid, while men have but I am truly grateful.

We all need help sometimes, even when we pretend we don’t, and our small acts of kindness can be returned to us tenfold in unexpected ways and from unexpected people.

Save the one who’s quiet

In a previous job many moons ago I was the designated fire officer.  As such I was trained to pull a body from a smoke filled building and to give first aid.   On my course I was told that when you come across the scene of an accident you ignore the people who are shouting because they are clearly still alive and find the people who are quiet because they are the ones most likely to be seriously hurt, unconscious or to have stopped breathing.

During my time in the ‘chronic illness world’, particularly online, I have met two groups of people: those who constantly ask for help, advice, love and support and those that don’t.  And it’s those who ask for support that often need it the least.  The friend I fell out with a couple of years ago had parents who had been together for 50 years, a loving, caring, supportive husband of over 20 years, private health care, a beautiful home overlooking the sea, lots of online friends………..yet virtually every post was asking for love, prayers and positive thoughts because she was having yet another crisis or hard time.  On the other side of the coin I have a friend who has been single her whole life, is horrendously ill, can barely leave her bed let alone the house, can’t have pets or friends to visit as she is too poorly to cope with them, must be soul-destroyingly lonely, frustrated and unfulfilled……..yet never complains.  She comes across as cheerful, positive, caring, kind and thoughtful but I worry about her far more than I worried about my other friend.  Yet it was the other friend who got all the support on Facebook, cards and flowers sent through the post, thoughtful gifts on her birthday and Christmas and my very sick, isolated friend is just left to get on with it.

When you meet me, I come across as bubbly, energetic, enthusiastic and hopefully kind and helpful.  I have a strong work ethic and will tackle jobs which actually make me sick or cause me huge pain because I refuse to give in to my diseases.  I will do things to help others, even if it means I end up in bed or braces (which they don’t see because I don’t tell them – I don’t want them to feel bad that helping them has made me worse).  I have been accused of exaggerating my illnesses because I can ‘do stuff’ or because I don’t dwell on the consequences of ‘doing stuff’ so no-one knows how ‘doing stuff’ affects me.  I sometimes wonder if I’d’ve received more help, understanding and support if I’d been more verbal about my limitations.  If I’d constantly gone online saying how lonely I was, or how isolated.  If I’d shown the world how depressed I’ve been at times over the last twenty years.  How I mourn not having a husband to share my life with.  How I’d love to go on holiday to somewhere sunny.  How I worry about finances and how I struggle to afford joint supports, orthotics, supplements and special clothing.  How I’ve sat in a heap on the kitchen floor crying due to the exhaustion and pain of cooking my dinner.  And the 1001 other issues I’ve faced.   But it’s not in my nature to whine.  I’m not comfortable asking for help and on the odd occasion I have asked for help it’s been less than unconditional so I haven’t asked again.  I’ve been around people who are negative and constantly ask for reassurance, help, guidance, advice, love, prayers and support and it’s bloody exhausting…….I don’t want to be a huge black hole of need, sucking the life out of others just so I can feel better.

But it is often those who don’t ask for help who need it most.  It’s not the person shouting “I’m going to top myself” who actually commits suicide, it’s those that pretend everything is fine and paint a smile on who ultimately take their own lives, then everyone is shocked because “they always seemed fine”.

So I make a concerted effort to ask my friends who seem like they have it together if they’re OK and I don’t take the first “yes, I’m fine” answer as the truth.  I dig a bit, and often when I dig a bit they admit that maybe things aren’t so fine after all.  It’s hard to ignore the friends who shout because, well, they’re SHOUTING and it’s easy to not contact the quiet ones for 6 months because they’re just getting on with it but it’s the people who don’t ask for help that often need it the most.

“Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.”

Stevie Smith

 

 

Gaslighting

The term ‘gaslighting‘ has become popular in recent times and, to a degree, I associate with it.  My childhood was weird by anyone’s standards, yet to the outside world my life was tickety boo.  My friends all told me they wished my Mum were theirs because “she’s lovely” and everyone and his dog liked my Dad who was a “grand fella”, but they didn’t have to live with my Mum’s mental health issues, addictions and poor parenting skills or my Dad’s volatile moods, complete lack of parenting or (now suspected) autistic tendencies.  For example, we had a dishwasher fitted in our kitchen and needed a hole putting through to outside for the waste pipe.  My Dad started stabbing at the wall with a kitchen fork and thought he could make a 3″ diameter hole through solid sandstone with it – it’s not exactly rational behaviour.  In response, my Mum chucked a mental and threw an entire shepherd’s pie, in its glass ovenproof dish, at his head which, if it had hit him, could have killed him.  I went up to my bedroom and read a book to escape the insanity – it was just an average week to me.

Although my childhood didn’t fit the strict definition of ‘gaslighting’ I still identify with the warping of reality and the constant pretence by my parents that everything was fine, when it was anything but.  As a child you don’t know this though – you just know that you’re miserable and confused and worried but don’t know why.  You’re unaware you’re living in a dysfunctional household or that your parents can’t cope or have mental health issues.  I knew they both loved me to bits, but their behaviour made me very, very unhappy so then the definition of being loved got warped too.  As a child this is all totally confusing and you simply can’t get your head round it.

I married a man who truly gaslighted.  He would argue with me that black was white and red was no colour at all.  He made me doubt my sanity, my perception and reality.  He would flirt outrageously with other women, then tell me I was being paranoid when I got upset about it.  He isolated me from my friends and family, constantly told me I looked like crap or talked shite, belittled me in front of his friends who all thought he was hilarious, spread rumours that I was mentally unstable (which after 4 years with him I actually was!).  This guy made me question everything about myself, but in such a subtle and manipulative way that I had no idea it was happening.

I had a very interesting conversation with my best mate recently about the fact several of my close friendships have died a death in recent years and it made me realize that the way these women have chosen to fall out with me also feels gaslight-y.  For example, my dearest friend of over 2 decades had become distant.  I could only ring her at certain times, she didn’t confide in me the way she used to and she had a family member she’d become extremely close to who had obviously taken my place.  After not hearing from her for over 3 weeks I wrote a blog post, the gist of which was that I feared for my mental health after my mum dies as we speak every day, my best friend wasn’t making time for me and I’d love to make some new friends to fill the void my Mum will leave when she dies (she wasn’t a raging alcoholic then and we had always been super close).  I didn’t feel I said anything bad and didn’t think my friend would read it as she was too busy to even text me let alone read my blog, but she did read it and went ballistic.  Within 24 hours her husband and son had unfriended me on Facebook and our 20 year friendship was over.  I was made out to be an awful person by her whole family, when she was the one being a shit friend and all I’d done was be honest about the situation and say that I felt isolated and lonely.  I mention my other closest friend in the post, who also read the article, and was not in the least bit offended by it.  In fact we had an honest discussion about our situations and both agreed that although we love our friendship we’d both like more friends as we live some distance from each other and can’t get to see each other as much as we’d like.

The neighbour who was nasty to me recently which I wrote about at the time hasn’t spoken to me since.  So she tells me I look old and miserable not once but 3 times despite knowing I was upset by her comments, then takes the hump and is now no longer speaking to me.  WTF?!

Of course, my biological Dad was the master manipulator.  He wasn’t very involved in my life but sent me to Coventry, along with the rest of my paternal family, when I asked someone else to give me away at my wedding (which I wrote about here).  So he’s a shit Dad but I am the one who is treated like a Leper when I’m honest and tell him he’s been a shit Dad.

In these people’s minds, they are in the right and I am in the wrong.  They can’t admit to themselves that they’ve actually not been the best parent/friend/husband so I am made to feel at fault because it’s easier to blame me than to face up to their own behaviour.  As the gaslighting article reminds me, it’s impossible to reason with them or to get them to take responsibility for their behaviour.  They truly believe you are the one being unreasonable or nasty, not them.

The gaslighting article describes how the author herself survived her childhood, and in reading it I realize that that’s how I survived too:

• By being defiant and not accepting my parents’ behaviour was normal or healthy – I knew it wasn’t.  “Being defiant does not make you difficult. It makes you resilient.”
• Accepting that acknowledgement is not on the cards.  I knew my Dad would never in a million years admit he’d been a rubbish parent or that he’d made a mistake in blaming me for our lack of relationship.
• Letting go of the wish for things to be different.  I didn’t try to change my Dad’s or my Friend’s minds when they stopped speaking to me – I just wished them the best and let it go.  I held on to the knowledge that I’d done nothing wrong other than to react to the pain these people had caused me and that was healthy and normal behaviour.  It was up to them to apologise and take responsibility and that was never going to happen.
• Detaching from the gaslighting.  In other words, holding on to what you know is reality even when the person is trying to persuade you that black is white.  It’s really hard to do as a gaslighter makes you question your own judgement but I know in my heart I’ve done nothing wrong other than react to a situation caused by someone else and if the other people involved can’t accept that or wants to blame me for their mistakes that’s their choice and there is nothing I can do about it.

I’m a very black and white person – I’ve needed to be to survive a life which has involved altered perceptions of reality.  I needed to hold on to my versions of right and wrong behaviour and to not deviate from them, because if I had deviated I would have lost my grip.  I’m also totally intolerant of bullshit.  I don’t give people the benefit of the doubt because in my world if you like (let alone love) someone you aren’t cruel, nasty or horrible to them – end of story.  The people in your life should always lift you up not put you down.  My best mate is a very honest person and I know she always tells me the truth, but she does it in a way which isn’t hurtful or critical.  I can’t be doing with people who are nicey nice all the time – they’re just blowing smoke up your arse and telling you what you want to hear, which is another way of altering reality.  But when people are honest they have to be honest in ways which protect the other person’s feelings – blurting out “yes, your arse does look big in that” is hurtful.

None of us are perfect.  I know I’ve said and done things which have inadvertently been hurtful, but I’m the first person to apologise when that happens and to acknowledge that I’ve made a mistake.  When my closest friend was upset by the blog post I wrote I emailed her to apologise, even though she was the one being a rubbish friend and it was her behaviour which had in part led to the post.  Needless to say she’s never apologised for upsetting me.  It’s important to take ownership of our behaviour and acknowledge the impact our words and actions have on others.  Even when I had my famous melt-down on Christmas Day, which I felt was in no way my fault, the first thing I did when I got back to my parents’ house was apologise to both of them.  Yes I was justified in blowing up, but I went too far and said things I shouldn’t (even though they were actually true!).

Now I’m older and, hopefully, wiser the thing I value most in any of my relationships is kindness.  When you’re kind to people you can’t go far wrong and when people are being un-kind it’s easy to recognize.  However, I am not kind to the point of being a doormat.  During the conversation with my best mate recently she said “for someone who hates confrontation you still seem to have more than your fair share” and I realize the reason for that is that some people mistake my kindness for weakness, then when I confront them with the fact that their behaviour towards me is shabby they can’t handle the fact I am standing up for myself.  Yes I try and see all sides of the argument and the other person’s point of view but I don’t make excuses for hurtful behaviour and I expect the people in my life to take ownership of their role in any discord.  If they can’t do that I’m not afraid to call them on it or to ultimately walk away.  Hand on heart I can honestly say that I have not missed the people who have fallen out with me for any second of any day – in fact, it was a relief to stop pretending that the relationship was fine when it clearly wasn’t.  It was a relief to stop questioning myself and wondering if I was doing something to make the other person treat me poorly – I wasn’t.

Watch what you say

We have a popular magazine-type TV programme here in the UK and this week a lady was on whose 14 year old daughter had committed suicide because of online and text bullying – you can watch the interview online here.  Both interviewers were in tears as they have children and could empathise hugely with the woman’s pain and loss.

I was bullied from the age of 7 until I was 18.  The worst years were between 12 and 14 where my school life was made a daily misery.  My home life was a train wreck and my school days were filled with fear, humiliation and physical harm.  No-one wanted to be friends with me in case the bullies picked on them too, so I spent my days in isolation.  Then everyone wondered why, by the time I was 17, I was clinically depressed.  I thought about killing myself on numerous occasions and did take a small overdose once.  Most nights I just wished I would die in my sleep so that I wouldn’t have to face the next day.  I dread to think what would have happened to me if I’d been a teenager now, with the advent of texting and social media – I know for an absolute fact I wouldn’t have been able to handle the bullying extending to my home life and going on 24/7.

When you’re bullied the perpetrators pick on everything you say and you end up mute.  You daren’t open your mouth because they will tear apart whatever comes out.   Consequently I lost my voice for a very, very long time.

As a victim of bullying it was a big decision for me to start a blog.  To open up my private life, my thoughts and inner most feelings to the world.  Blogs are open to comments from any Tom, Dick or Mary and the anonymity of the internet means that people seem to feel they have carte blanche to say whatever they like, however they like.   People like to tell you they disagree with you, you are wrong, they are right.  I’ve been told my blog is a joke (which means my life is a joke), I can’t be as ill as I claim, I know nothing and I need to shut the fuck up.  They forget they are speaking to a human being, with feelings.  We have no idea when we bash off a comment what the impact on the recipient will be.

I am harsh with people who leave negative comments on my blog.  You want to be a mean girl, I can be mean too.  I don’t like doing it but no longer will I let people belittle me or not allow me my voice.  I don’t fucking care whether you agree with me or not – I am entitled to my opinion on my own blog.  You want to share a different opinion write your own goddamn blog.

The hoo ha when we left the European Union, and which continues on with monotonous fervor, did my absolute nut in.  The Remainers would not allow anyone with a different opinion to theirs a voice.  I got absolutely pissed off every time I shared my opinion on Facebook that two or three friends instantly challenged it.  They were polite enough but the constant arguing of their own point of view was exhausting and relentless.   It got to the stage where I just stopped talking about politics online because I couldn’t handle the stress.   My voice had, once again, been silenced and it made me absolutely furious.

We have to be very careful about what we say online and in texts and how we say it.  We have no idea the fragility of the person we are interacting with.  I appear a very strong, confident person but a decade of bullying inevitably leaves its mark.  Not only that but my biological Dad criticized everything I did, ditto my ex-Husband.  I was told everything that came out of my mouth was shite so once again I stopped talking.

However I am a grown up now and I refuse to be silenced.  I have a voice, I have a viewpoint and I am entitled to both on my own blog and on my own Facebook page.

I give other people the same courtesy.  My readers and FB friends can write whatever they like on their blogs or FB walls – I just won’t comment on it if I disagree.  They are entitled to their voice in their own space, they’re just not entitled to silence or criticize my voice in my space.

Bullying and entitlement to say whatever you like whenever you like to whoever you like has gotten completely out of hand.  When vile contestants like Kim Woodburn are runner-up in Big Brother it proves that nasty, aggressive, out of control behaviour is somehow now celebrated and nice, kind, normal people are seen as boring.  It has to change.

UK citizens in the Remain camp were all gobsmacked when the majority of people chose to leave the EU but the reason was very simple – the Brexiteers hadn’t had their voice listened to for a very, very long time.  Remainers disagreed with their views so either dismissed them or argued over them.  They were convinced that their argument was right and if they said it long enough and loud enough they’d ‘convert’ everyone else to it but as Dr Phil is fond of saying “how did that work for you?”  The same can be said of the election of Trump in the States.  I have recently lost yet more friends because I was fed up to the back teeth of them forcing their political views on me and trying to silence my voice which makes me deeply sad, but I’d rather have a voice and no friends than no voice and friends who won’t allow me to speak.

Moving On

By the time we reach our 50th year we all have emotional baggage.  I have so much it would fill several airport trollies and need a small army of porters to tow it behind me, which would be both expensive and exhausting.  So at various times in my life I’ve made a choice to leave my suitcases behind.  I now travel along my life’s path with a large hold-all filled only with my most vital and treasured possessions.  It turns out all that baggage I thought I needed, and which made me me, was unnecessary.

As regular readers know, I did not have the best childhood in the world.  My parents lacked education, emotional intelligence and made some very poor decisions.  In my twenties I was really angry about that and the way their choices and behaviour had affected me.  But here’s what I learned: they did not know any better.  They had been taught poor coping mechanisms and interpersonal skills by their parents and were simply living what they’d learned.  By the time I was 30 I had to make a choice to forgive them or move away from them.  I chose forgiveness of my Mum and Step-Dad because I love them and they love me, and chose to let go of my biological Dad.

I have no idea why some people hold on to the pain of poor parental relationships.  Why anyone would spend their whole lives blaming their parents for how their own lives have turned out.  Yes our childhoods are determined by our parents, but our adult lives are not.  We can choose to let go, forgive (or not) and to move on.  We can talk through our issues with a trained therapist.  We can learn better ways of showing anger and hurt.  We can read books on how to improve our communication and interpersonal skills.  We can learn to do things differently to the generations who have come before us.  By the time we’re 50 we surely have to take responsibility for our own lives and not keep blaming someone else for how we’ve turned out.

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” – Maya Angelou

I fell out with two of my closest friends in recent years and both were holding on to past pain, which I found frustrating.  One had had an eating disorder since her early teens.  She was adopted and had let this dominate her entire adult life.  She never sought help and when her body started packing up from years of malnutrition to be honest I found it hard to have much sympathy.  Her food issues set a bad example for her three children and I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t even tried to sort her shit out.  She herself adopted a child and it’s plain for everyone to see that she never really bonded with him.  She’s a good parent in that he’s looked after very well, but she keeps her emotional distance and is repeating the distant relationship she had with her adoptive Mum.  The other friend also had a strained relationship with her Mum, poor body image, couldn’t come to terms with her chronic illness and the effect this had had on her life, and basically wallowed in the whole thing.  Her constant ‘poor me’ attitude was really grating especially as, compared to me, she’d had a pretty good life!  Why would you not seek counselling and at least make a stab at sorting your issues out?  Why do some people get to their 40s and keep walking on the same old treadmill of pain and misery, focusing on everything they’ve lost and not on all the things they still have?  I can’t image waking up every day and hating myself or my body – how on earth would I face the days?

It seems to me that people who are still wallowing in past pain by the time they’re middle aged are getting something out of it.  You wouldn’t do it otherwise.  We are animals and we don’t embark on behaviour that isn’t rewarding, even if the reward is negative.  I pointed this out in an email I sent to the second friend mentioned above which she made public on Facebook and I was branded an evil witch and sent to Coventry by half my so-called ‘friends’, but I stand by every single word.  We all have baggage.  We all have relationships which have damaged us in some way.  I’ve had my entire adult life taken away through chronic illness as have many of you, yet I am happy.  I have my emotional shit together.  I do not blame my Dad for being crap, or my Mum for her lack of coping skills.  I realized I’d made a mistake in chosing my abusive Husband so I left the creep – I didn’t stay in the marriage torturing myself like my parents have done for the better part of 40 years.  I do not blame my body for letting me down – bless it, it’s doing the best it can to keep me alive despite everything.  I do not have the life I’d planned, but I do have a life and I have no intention of living it in misery.

Happiness is a choice.  No matter what’s gone on before we can wake each day and choose to not let our past define our future.  We can forgive ourselves, and others, for our mistakes and for not being perfect.  I am not one of these happy clappy people who embraces my disability – who the fuck would embrace a broken body?!  But I accept my broken-ness and try to live the best life I can despite it.  If I focused on everything my illnesses have taken from me (career, partner, kids, money, holidays, hobbies) I’d probably top myself, so I don’t focus on it!  It’s not rocket science.

Ho bloody ho

I wish I could say I had a lovely Christmas day, but I’d be lying.  All out of the blue I had a total meltdown and spent an hour sobbing in my car parked in a forest.  Today it all seems petty and ridiculous but at the time I just couldn’t help it, so please don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t have done – none of us know how we’d react living someone else’s life.

For 20 years our Christmas morning was dictated by my step-nan, who lived in Sheltered housing.  My Dad always left us to go round to his Mum’s to open her presents and take her meal, leaving Mum and I on our own waiting….and waiting….and waiting for him to get home so we could open our presents and eat our meal (we couldn’t go with him as my step-nan couldn’t stand the sight of me because I wasn’t her “proper grand-child”).  It was Christmas, however, and on that day more than any other one has to show love and tolerance – after all, my Nan was on her own (although why we always had to do the Christmas thing irked me, when she also had a daughter and 5 grown-up “proper” grand-children who could occasionally have shouldered the burden and given us a year off).

Three years ago, aged 99, my Nan entered Residential Care and I thought things would change.  I was wrong.  And this year, for some reason I can’t work out, it just pissed me off.  A lot of effort had gone into the presents for my Dad this year which involved me crawling around in the loft, I’d only had 3 hours sleep on Christmas Eve due to being awake half the night with awful stomach pain, yet I still got up early to walk Bertie and get to my parents’ for 10am where I was expecting a cuppa and a mince pie before we started opening our gifts.  Only when I got there my Dad was AWOL.  He’d gone to see his Mum, who has dementia and doesn’t even know it’s Christmas.  I lost it.  I have no idea why.  I suppose I expected that, for one day in the year, I would come first and the fact my parents couldn’t even manage that just got to me.  So I told my Mum “if he can’t be arsed to be here, neither can I” and I left, but not after a few choice words with my Mother who was already on the vodka (let’s not even go there).

My Dad had had all week to visit his Mum but if he really wanted to go on Christmas Day I simply can’t work out why he couldn’t have waited until 2.30pm which is when I go home. Why did he have to go Christmas morning, when his Mum would either still be in bed or in the middle of being washed and dressed by the Carers and he knew I was expected?  I’ve spent 20 years twiddling my thumbs on Christmas morning waiting for him and I’m not prepared to do it any more, not when there’s absolutely no need.  My energy window is so small I literally have about 5 hours on Christmas day before I conk, and I guess it still hurts that my parents don’t ever vary their routine to fit around that fact.

I drove to one of my favourite places and sat in the car sobbing.  I’d felt ill all week, had had barely any sleep and I was exhausted.  Absolutely and utterly exhausted.  So I had a pity party for one and wallowed in every second of it.  I was then so tired I lay down in my car and napped.

After I came to, and sat with teeth chattering in the cold, I realized I’d have to go back, even though every cell in my body wanted not to.  So I drove back to my parents and apologized for having a hissy fit.  My Dad apologized for being “selfish” (he wasn’t being selfish, he was trying to be nice to his Mum but as usual did it at my expense) and promised he would never do it again – and I know he won’t.  I apologized for the things I said to my Mum (even though, if I’m honest, I wasn’t the slightest bit sorry), who had had a few more vodkas in the hour I’d been away so just laughed the whole thing off.

We started to finally open our presents around 11.30am when there was a knock on the door.  Who the fuck visits people on Christmas morning??!  It was a family friend and, while it was nice to see her, her fiance and their dog, they were still sitting at our dining table at 1pm.  They weren’t having their Christmas dinner til evening, but we were all bloody starving especially my Mum who doesn’t eat breakfast.  I could also feel my limited energy draining away like water down a plug hole and I realized that if I didn’t do something I’d conk before I even got my lunch.  So I eventually piped up “sorry guys, I’m going to chase you as we’re all ready for our dinner” which felt really rude but I was past caring!  We then finished opening our presents and finally got our lunch at 2.15pm (nearly 2 hours after we’d planned).

By 3pm the week of shitty health, pain-riddled insomnia and the emotional upset of the morning made me feel like I’d gone 10 rounds with Muhammad Ali and I could barely put one foot past the other, but I still had to walk Bertie in the howling wind and lashing rain before getting home at 4pm.  I couldn’t wait to get in my pjs, make a couple of hot water bottles for my back and stomach, crawl into bed and shut out the world.  It was the first time I’d been happy all day.

My parents and I are going out for our roast Christmas dinner today and I’m dreading it.  My Dad will be oblivious to the fact I feel like shite, and my Mum will be drunk and forcibly happy (or not drunk, argumentative and miserable).  Yay.  I can’t wait for today to be over, so I can come home and not have to visit my parents til the New Year!

 

The power of words

People never cease to disappoint me.  I have no idea where the current trend of saying everything that’s on your mind has come from, but all it does is create conflict.  We seem to have lost the ability to think of anyone else’s feelings but our own and tact seems to have done a runner.

I’ve had a weird idea for a photo in my head for a while, so this week I put it into practice.  It involved someone dressing up in a long dress and a velvet cape to give the illusion of a by-gone era and I couldn’t find a volunteer, so I volunteered myself.  For Christmas I’ve treated myself to an off-camera flash so before starting on my complicated photo I wanted to do some practice shots to try it out.  I’ve never used flash before and haven’t a clue what I’m doing but I learned a lot from my little trial.  Having said all that, trying to light and focus on a model who isn’t actually there because they’re behind the camera was tricky!  I had to keep fiddling with the settings on my camera, then dashing round to sit on a stool, focus my camera with a remote shutter release, take the picture, then get up again to check the image.  I must have spent nearly an hour fiddling around trying to get the new lighting right and by the end of it I was sweating like a  pig on a spit.

I don’t usually put photos of myself on my blog, for the reason that there are a lot of fucking weirdos out there who could save the image and use it for god knows what purpose.   Why on earth anyone would want to download a photo of a total stranger off the internet is anyone’s guess, but I know it does happen and a friend of mine had photos stolen off her blog and found them being used on t-shirts!!  However, the whole point of this post is what a “friend” said about my picture so I’m going to break the habit of a lifetime and include it:

This wasn’t meant to be a portrait of myself – I was just practicing my lighting for another shot.  I put on a little eyeshadow and lipstick so I could see how colour came out under my new flash, but other than that I’m wearing no foundation, blusher or anything else – in fact, I don’t think I’d even washed my face for two days previous to this picture being taken and put the eyeshadow on ontop of the muck 😉  It has not been photoshopped or airbrushed in any way, apart from lightening the blue in my eyes a little.  And bear in mind I’ve been ill for over two decades, hardly sleep, spend every day in pain and exhausted to the point of collapse and will be 50 this birthday.  So, knowing all that I think it came out OK.

I put my photos on Facebook for my friends to comment on as some of them are also into photography and give me invaluable feedback on my technique.  Within seconds of this image being put on Facebook I received a text (why did she text me, why didn’t she comment on Facebook?) from a “friend” who told me the image was awful, I looked miserable, I looked years older than I am and to basically get rid of it (and she used exclamation points to ram the message home).

Why would someone say that, particularly someone who is supposed to be my friend?  What was her intention in telling me she hated my portrait and I looked like shit, because the only reason I could think of for saying that to someone is to make them feel bad.  What did she expect my reply to be?  “Gosh, being as though you hate it I’ll delete it immediately.  And of course I will run any photo past you in the future in case you don’t like it”.  Or “I’m sorry I look old, I’ll book myself in for a some Botox and fillers toute suite or maybe you think I should go the whole hog and have a face lift”.  Just to spite her I feel like printing it off as an A3 poster and putting it on my lounge room wall 😉  Try taking a close-up picture of yourself, without makeup and under harsh studio lighting and lets see how your fifty year old face turns out – there’s a bloody good reason we only see 20 year old flawless models in advertising campaigns and that’s because they’re the only people whose features look good under those conditions and even then their images are airbrushed to within an inch of their life after the event.

I was always taught that if you have nothing nice to say about someone, you say nothing because to say something nasty is hurtful.  It seems these days we’ve lost the ability to consider the power of our words and how they affect others.

I’m helping with our Camera Club’s beginners group this year and this includes having to critique people’s photos.  Some of the pictures are absolutely dreadful but, although I do give constructive criticism and tell someone how the image can be improved, I always always say something positive because you can decimate someone’s confidence by telling them how crap their picture is and I’m in the job of making people into better photographers, not making them feel so shit about their work they never pick up a camera again.

There seems to be a mind-set these days that people are “entitled to their opinion” but y’know what, they’re not.  Not if their opinion is hurtful, belittling, spiteful or just plain nasty.  Your friends are supposed to lift you up, not make you feel like crap.  I wouldn’t even intentionally be nasty to a stranger as I don’t know their circumstances or the impact my words will have – they could be on the brink and my being mean could tip them over the edge.  The exception is if they’ve already been hurtful to me, and then to be fair the gloves are off and they deserve what they get!

My final image (below), and the reason I was practicing dressed up in a cape, isn’t my most successful ever but it’s all a learning curve – not every picture can be a competition winning masterpiece.  This composite picture was incredibly hard to achieve and I learned much in doing it, not least who my friends are!