Missing, one soulmate.

I’m kidding.

Mostly.

I’ve been feeling like I might kind of like meet someone, at some point.

I know I’ve said I ‘don’t agree’ with blended families (wow, bitter and hurt and scared much?) but, I dunno, it seems mean to force myself to go through life alone, just because it’s not the way I wanted it.

Kinda reeks of throwing toys out of the pram, right?

I’m a little lonely. I know now that I don’t need a partner, but I’d like one.

Someone funny with sparkly eyes and a nice smile, who is kind to my son without trying to parent him. Who can string a sentence together.

Up until a few months ago, I dated a lot. And I made a heap of new friends (yes, really) and rekindled old relationships. I fucked up a lot, also. I know I’m too picky, but I don’t see the point in getting serious with someone, when there’s a pretty clear deal-breaker.

Someone that never wants to move out of Perth. Someone who gets blind drunk every night and doesn’t see a problem. Someone who has a child the same age, and is at the other end of the parenting spectrum.

And there’s the whole me feeling totally unlovable thing, because really, would you date a single mum with cancer? So when a guy is nice to me, or says he’s interested, I never quite buy it. And I have practically run screaming from a couple of genuinely nice people – but I’m trying not to be so insane.

With guys my age, they’re generally at the ‘get smashed all the time’ or ‘wanting to settle down, get married and have kids’ stage, and I haven’t found a lot that are in between that. Not that I’m only willing to date guys my age, but I generally see guys I’m friends with from school, or used to work with, or whatever and they tend to be in that range.

What I’d really like, is to just meet someone, and have one of those instant attraction things. I probably wouldn’t admit this anywhere else, but I’m a total romantic, and I love all that love at first sight, soulmates, eyes catching across a room stuff. I’ve never ‘looked’ for a relationship before, they’ve always just developed, so I feel kinda lost. I don’t feel good about dating sites – I’m kinda organically minded in lots of ways, I guess. Like a ‘if it’s meant to be, I wouldn’t have to make any effort’ mindset. Not quite, but close enough.

I guess that’s one of the reasons things not working out with Craig shattered me so much, it felt like my belief system was totally shaken. Because it should have worked out, and it didn’t.

So – where does one meet a nice guy? How did you and your significant other meet?

Ash x

ps – goes without saying that my bloods are looking really really excellent or I wouldn’t be thinking about dragging anyone else into all this. Just don’t wanna jinx it til I get full results xx

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Is it Done

Alternate title: Life is crazy, when you are.

Sometimes, I just don’t know where to start. When Bailey was 4 months old and we brought our first house just before I was diagnosed with cancer? The first memory I have of my Dad being in hospital, his Doctor sneaking me into the ICU and being so frightened of the screens, the beeping, finally seeing what his eyes look like behind glasses after hydraulic acid pouring onto his face? The first time I was assaulted as a child? As an adult? My Mum ringing to say she’d found a house overseas, and would see us on holidays? When I witnessed a suicide? When my husband left us? When I left our house? When I (finally but inevitably) developed delayed C-PTSD?

My mind is so fucked up, that if nothing horrible and life altering and traumatic happens for awhile, I get so anxious, and feel sick and heavier in my chest every day, until something does spazz me out.

And then I deal, and recover. And feel normal – whatever that is, for a little while.

I’d really like the normal patches to last longer.

I’d like to not feel as if I need crisis, instability.

I don’t think I come across ‘crazy’ to most people, I’m lucky to make friends very easily. I probably come across happy, or ‘a bit of a hippy, really centred’ (from my newest friend) even while I’m counting down the hours until I can get out of my head with a drink, or write here, or crawl out my soul and into someone else’s.

‘I like the frantic. I like you’ said another friend ‘but you have to like it too.’

I don’t really, but I’m bored without it.

I remember when I was first really sick, some distant family member gave me a copy of ‘You Can Heal Your Life’. I was really offended, because (unless I’m missing something, I didn’t read it cover to cover) it pretty much insinuates that you kind of choose your own illnesses – I think cancer was hanging onto resentment or some such thing. I was actually at a really well, happy point in my life leading up to being diagnosed.

So I don’t buy that, to that extreme anyway, but I do believe that stress can manifest itself in physical illness. Of course it can.

So I end up in this thought loop, is my life crazy/intense/dramatic/whatever because I am, or is the other way around?

Things have been quiet lately, my neighbour has stopped calling me a whore over the fence, treatment is ok with no major ups and downs, things are still static with Craig, I’m not dating, I’m making a conscious effort to not bring drama into my life…

I’m. so. bored.

And I feel boring socially, because I don’t have a funny story about the latest date I went on, I haven’t been in any life threatening situations, no-ones seriously upset me, I’m not getting drunk…

I think I got so used to being extreme, I don’t know how to not be.

How does everyone else do this ‘normal’ thing?

x

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Flame Trees

Do we all have somewhere like this?

A place that makes us feel like this?

I went for a drive last week. I chucked the dogs in my old white wagon, wound the windows down (sprayed for spiders), and went for an explore.

I drove past old friends houses, and where everyone used to congregate around the mulberry tree. On shiny paved roads through what used to be bush, with names like Gumtree, Cockatiel, Bottlebrush.  Past the house my Dad built, where they sell fresh eggs for $4 a dozen. Where the haunted house with the tennis courts was, units now.

Surfing beaches, swimming beaches, fishing beaches. The local names, Cosies, Dumpers, Fenceline. I wondered if people still use them.

I stopped at the old local instead of the new chain supermarket for grapes and chocolate.

My first best friend’s mum looked me straight in the eye and asked if she could help me with anything.

I just smiled, because I don’t recognise me either.

This year hasn’t been a waste of time. It’s felt like it at times but I’m. Beating. Cancer.

Everyday I wake up and get out of bed, and make coffee, and joke with Bailey, and go to the beach and drive too fast and drag myself to treatment I’m beating cancer, and that’s what I have to focus on right now.

I’ve got that burning enthusiasm again, that I lost somewhere between marriage and separation and cancer and mediocrity. It’s mental, my body doesn’t follow through, but maybe it will.

I’ve got plans, and backups, and itchy feet, and sun streaming through the windows, after what felt like the longest winter ever.

x

ps – I haven’t been around much. The last lot of treatment kicked my ass BADLY. But. IT’S WORKING. So now I’m gonna go catch up on what everyone else has been doing xx

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