The good, the bad and the downright fugly

It took me many years to figure this much out, strangely. I am not normally considered stupid, nor do I consider myself so but ….. behaviours learned as a child, revolted against and suppressed, come back to haunt you in the sneakiest of ways. They creep in under the skirting boards of our consciousness like a colourless, odourless, poison gas. Unless we learn to recognise these reactions and behaviour sets, worse still if we are not even aware of them, the effects upon our lives can be both profound and unpleasant. This has been apparent to me for a while now but the realisations keep developing. I have had help along the way and part of the purpose of this piece is to give thanks to several people for their help and assistance.

The last 12 months of my life have brought many very significant realisations, principally because I was presented with a rather "interesting" set of circumstances.

Someone, with his own wisdom, presented me with a mental virus, a thought that has been persistent and impossible to completely dismiss. The thought that, in his words, my "neediness" was driving away those I loved. I know now that he did not truly understand me but he understood that I was, in some ways, fundamentally fucked up. As much as that mental virus might have been needed, his method of implanting it; when I had not long been unexpectedly diagnosed to be in the terminal phase of cancer and as a very unwell hospital in-patient - the "lecture" was delivered with me in a wheelchair and him standing is something I have struggled to forgive. He was highly convincing and left me utterly isolated, unable to seek help from those close to me for fear of appearing "needy": and driving them further away. I came very close to taking my own life as a result, that evening, so worthless I felt. Perhaps he thought that this was the only way of planting it to achieve sufficient effect to be worthwhile. I do not know. I will not ask.

He had, unknown to me, discussed what he was to say with my son and gained his acceptance for his actions. The potential for the effect of this action on my son (I found out about the discussions many months later) is not something I will ever truly forgive.

I thank him for the stimulus but not for the risky and foolhardy method of delivery.

I was under the distinct impression that I was dying and felt utterly alone.

When I considered ending my own life using about 40 sleeping pills (easy enough to obtain as an in-patient) I did so by asking myself a simple question: "Is going on with life worth it?"

The answer, clearly, was yes but it had a caveat behind it: "only if I am going to LIVE what is left of my life".

I knew, from realisations over the previous three years (the latter years of my life have been quite full of revelations), that there is a joy to life, that its not about "getting through it" - its about living it, feeling it, experiencing it. The good, the bad and the ugly. Experiencing the highs and the lows. An anodyne existence is just that - an existence, not a life. I have an ex-lover to thank for that. I won't name her although if she reads this, I am thanking her here, now and openly. She opened my eyes to life and for that I will be forever in her debt.

So, I thought, what to do?

I realised that if I was to achieve the emotional balance required to deal with what was coming with sanity, rationality and any sense of joy at what remained, I would have to address some deep seated emotional issues that I could dimly detect by the shadows they cast but could neither fully identify nor comprehend.

Clearly I needed a guide in the exploration of my own internal landscape. An initial attempt with a Clinical Psychologist based in the local hospice led to difficulty. Scarcely an uplifting location, given my situation, The gentleman was highly competent, without doubt, but I felt no connection with him. The approach, the person was too …. clinical.

So I asked around. I was very fortunate. A good friend was able to recommend someone from whom she, and her sisters, had obtained significant help. Thank you Sarah.

I made contact and started counselling sessions with someone who suited me. Professional but not clinical and excellent at what she does. Message me if you want a referral. I cannot recommend her highly enough.

With her assistance and the help of several platonic female friends - see "Marko's Women" elsewhere in this blog - I came, progressively, to understand myself better, to appreciate the value of those parts of me that are good and worthwhile and to re-evaluate other parts of me, especially several learned behaviours that have caused me much trouble throughout my life.

Please forgive the wordy introduction but …. I felt that is was time to air the first part of this story in the round. Reasonable context, in this piece was, and will again be, required.

This piece is about my damage, the damage I took and the damage I dished out reacting to that. Its about being honest with myself as well as you and trying, in my own way, to help others who may be suffering similar issues and conditions. I suspect I am far from unique.

The root of the problem

I wasn't very well loved as a child. My mother was a depressed mess for much of my childhood and largely rejected both my sister and myself. She got help, I think, when I was about 7 or 8 and, thinking of it now it seems to me that although she was never really "well" she did find a little more joy in life. She doted on my younger brother and he grew up much better adjusted, in some ways, to my sister and I. By then I had come to distrust any of the words of love, expressed to me in later childhood. They always seemed to come with a conditional clause - it seemed to me that they were used to reassure before a parental demand, not just in and of themselves as affection. They were used as a verbal tool. A carrot to accompany the stick.

Our parents often discussed us while we were in the same room. We were not included in these conversations and commanded to remain silent. Discussing our fecklessness, laziness, poor deportment, lack of intelligence and other such criminal tendencies in our presence seemed appropriate to them. They also discussed significant decisions made on our behalf in our hearing in unflattering terms. The discussion that led to the decision to send me away to a boarding school at the age of 9 is one that I recall well. It took place during the school holidays in the upstairs drawing room of my Uncle's house in Anstruther in Fife, after dinner. I remember listening while I solemnly, silently , and it seems to me in retrospect, ironically, played patience with some rather dog eared old pack of Waddington's that were hard to shuffle since they were so worn as to more resemble toast than playing cards. These were considered suitable entertainment for me after dinner when my parents liked us to be present but silent. The deciding factor supporting the decision seemed to be to have "some sense and manners beaten into me".

I left home at 16 and never again lived with my parents. It took me 4 years to even visit them after I left.

So...... focus in.

First we have strolled through the early open land of youth, looked at the scenery and moved toward the dark forest. Todays walk will take us down my own darkest path, my deepest damage. The path narrows. Follow me if you will.

First time out

My wife was my second love. My first had been a much shorter term relationship (around 4 months) and was mostly conducted at a long distance. Looking back I do not think this particular learned behaviour had much chance to cut in.

The presentation of the issue

It became clear to me that my marriage was dead long before it ended. I felt unloved, controlled, taken for granted and, in some ways abused. Whether I was or not is a matter of debate. The truth is never just one truth. Emotionally though that is my truth.

How did it get to that?

This is all retrospective. Some of it, given the elapsed time, may be wrong or misremembered (our relationship lasted a long time, its a while ago). Nor has it been assisted by my wife's recollections, she has always refused to discuss the breakdown of the marriage or its reasons.

It seems to me that there are many reasons but I can now acknowledge my part in its overall destruction and understand how and even why my part of that happened. There were many things that went wrong over the years that were to do with my actions but most of them correlate to a loss of faith, by me, in the nature of our relationship. Without realising it I started to withdraw, emotionally. My wife made demands of me, increasingly, during the first two years of our marriage. She seemed to stop being openly affectionate and such expressions of affection that did take place often seemed to be accompanied by a demand of some sort. That triggered a retreat response in me. I felt under threat, emotionally. In some ways, and to some part of me, it was like I was living, once more, with my mother. I stopped being "myself". Eventually I lost the joy from my life. I became a miserable bastard. I got on with earning, drank too much and mostly kept my tongue still except to try to keep the peace.

I had ceased to feel loved or cherished. I thought I was was simply useful. I earned. I could be trusted for support, emotionally and financially, with her issues. I would do pretty much anything asked of me, until the final 2 years when I rebelled. I had given my solemn oath to remain with this woman and I raised a child to adulthood with her. I had committed and remained so but I became disengaged. When she left me, I did not want her back. Mostly what I felt in her company, toward the end, was misery at what she, I and the relationship had become.

Do not be mistaken here, There were many positives. My son, whom I love deeply. She supported the development of my career which has, and still remains, successful. I never stopped trying to help her, even after she left me. I only stopped talking to her when I realised that our mutual behaviours were so set in stone that it was continuing to damage me remaining in contact with her. Its hard to change yourself when the past pulls you back into programmed patterns of behaviour, established over decades, with the person you know best and with whom you have the most history.

Second Strike

My third love definitely fell victim to a related and consequent issue. This, like the first, was conducted at a long distance. By then I thought knew what I needed in a relationship: love, joy, contribution as an equal partner and not just to be an earning cipher. I certainly knew many of things I didn't want. I was very much in love and wanted little but to be with her. It was complicated, long distance and sporadic: the circumstances were utterly beyond my control. Eventually I gave her an ultimatum which reflected my needs and clashed with hers. Safe to say it didn't work out. I never lived with her and although my reflection of my needs (you may call longing to be with the one you love "needy" - I rather choose to to call it what love is about) could be seen as a mistake (and in functional terms it was) it was simply me asking for what I needed, albeit in a non negotiable form. There were reasons for that ultimatum. I wont detail them here except to say that I felt that my life had become an intolerable limbo where love and affection happened always to someone else's timetable (in fairness dictated by the necessities of her life not by her choice) and where even her intentions had become highly uncertain. It was an unreasonable demand. I tried to force her to make a decision. Not to go one way or another, just to make a decision. I wasn't the only one to make mistakes but that action effectively ended the relationship. Under different circumstance it might have worked but it was clear to me that as it was it could never be what I needed.

Up to that point in my life I had only "lived" with one woman, my wife. It is fair to say that the behaviours that were learnt in childhood were reinforced in marriage. The end of the third relationship was as a result of the reaction against the reasons for the ending of the second coupled with a stark realisation that "if only" isn't "is" unless you can get it moved from "isn't" to "is". That movement requires a minimum of the two people principally involved: under certain, more unfortunate, circumstance, it involves more complexity and far more constraints. By that time I was sufficiently self aware to see what I needed and what didn't need. Being the "other man" was something I really didn't need and found I really could not cope with long term.

Then I got ill.

So, what lessons have I learned. Did I "fix" myself and if so how?

The answer isn't simple.

Some things I have managed to resolve completely but they are few enough. Some things I am still discovering. I mostly understand the "why" and the "what" now.

The majority of my negative learned behaviours I have learned to manage to the extent that they do not damage my current relationship. They are still there, too deep ground in to be completely eradicated but …. in managing to stop them propagating into effects I feel a certain satisfaction. I laugh a lot these days, surprisingly. I feel joy often. I love and am loved. I feel of worth. The particular issue discussed here is "under management" and I watch myself carefully.

When I feel the need to withdraw, I pause, note it and re-engage after a moments thought. I am lucky in my partner. We don't make demands of the other. Neither of us wishes to. We are happy to quite simply be: in silence or in conversation there is affection and love. We talk but its not always needed. Even a simple touch on the shoulder as you pass each other in a room is often worth far more than words, if its meant from the heart.

If I am to draw any lessons for myself and for you, dear reader, from this tale of madness, despair, triumph, turbulence and peace, then they are as follows:

@ Parents: NEVER make your love for your children conditional. Build them up, don't break them down. They belong in a family and not at bootcamp. Your love for them should never be a matter of negotiation. If it is you arent yet fit to be a parent.
@ Spouses/Partners 1: if you feel that you need to withdraw, make sure you really understand why before doing so. If you don't know why then don't allow yourself to disengage until you understand and are happy with your own reasons for doing so.
@ Spouses/Partners 2: if your partner objects to something you have said as being hurtful, listen. The chances are that they really do mean it. Only thought and discussion will allow you both to understand whether that has more "validity and logic" than a feeling but, if meant, it is a valid feeling. Don't belittle it with "you are being over-sensitive". Dismissal is the same as failing to care. Repeated dismissal becomes abuse from the one you love.
@ Spouses/Partners 3: NEVER make your love for your lover conditional except in one thing. If you love them, truly, then that is not conditional upon them doing what you want them to. Its only conditional on them being what they are, the one you love.
@ Everyone: DONT allow yourself to be ruled by your knee-jerk reactions. Think, clearly. Understand first. Then act.

Manipulation 101

Ever wondered HOW you got manipulated? How you ended up in a trap where you feel that nothing you do is quite good enough, that somehow YOU are not good enough, that your partner seems permanently disappointed in what you do and even who you are? Here is the good news: the chances are that you aren't inadequate - you just got manipulated.

I figured something out a little while back - think carefully about your long term relationships. Not necessarily the one you are in, perhaps one in the past where it broke up with you feeling like crap and with the other party somehow always with the psychological advantage.

I would postulate that most people are of good intent: they mean no harm to others and often strive to help those about them. How do such people become manipulated?

Its horribly easy. Someone in a place of trust becomes critical of them, tells them they are not doing the right thing when what the criticiser means is simply that they are not doing what THAT person wants or even just not doing something the way that they want it done.

The victim acquiesces: a loved one needs something; plans are changed, compliance takes place. The perpetrator gets most of what they want, the victim is ever so slightly reduced in the eyes of both the perpetrator and themselves.

Time rolls on, years often. The cycle continues. Its a steady and slow rate of damage but very very certain. Eventually the victim will feel that there is nothing that they can do that is right, that their best endeavours are inadequate and that they are a complete failure.

The answer to the question "How do you control someone of good intent?" is easy; just keep telling them they are sinners, inadequate, not trying etc etc. It is a self fulfilling prophecy. They will attempt to improve when it is not improvement that is the aim but the satisfaction of someone else's will and intent.

So when someone suggests that you do something different from the way you do it or do something you weren't going to do and sounds critical of you in the same breath, just say "No thanks" and smile sweetly.

Where it goes after that is up to them. Don't get angry either - the chances are that the perpetrator didn't understand the impact - they were just following a proven "success" strategy for getting their own way.

A reason, a season, a lifetime

When we have this…
When we got that …
When we've all that we want…..
When life has passed us by?

I don't think so

Love cant wait for some sunlit upland
Love wont be there when you reach the top
Love wont come when called
Love isn't what you save for a rainy day

You made me realise the moment is all thats important

I only have to think of you and it becomes so clear

It don't matter that its a rainy day
Even when its pouring
Even when my shoes got holes
When the future isn't so bright

Your my love for all reasons
My love for all seasons
My lover, my lady, my friend
You fill me with joy

Moonbeam

A winter's sunrise,
Cold, spectral, pink
Snow, the season's icing
Rounds off the edges
The light, so searing blue
Illuminates my soul

Moonbeam frozen
Trapped in fate's ice
Snow coated, ice rimmed
Inside: womblike
Warm, solitary
Safe for thought

A funny old life

On growing up ......

On the Peter Pan thing....
Thats the lesson you already learned, long before you met me
First you grow up
Then you learn to accept the child inside you, respect it, love it, cherish, let it be

Sorry. Thats the wrong way round.

Are you?

Are you the stars, the moon,
Hearts and flowers to me?
Heaven and earth to me?
Did your coming shake 
the ground beneath my feet

Less cliched did you cause me
To go mad with wild 
Unfettered passion?
Or put out flags 
Declaiming love in
All it's richness

No
You are no cliche
And no Hallmark
Pattern romance victim
To me you are simply
Breath itself

Musings Part II

I have been thinking, as I expect many do when they reach my point in life, about the shape of my past. What was good, what wasn't, the good times, the hard times, the lovers, child, friends, acquaintances, enemies old and new - that style of thing.

What struck me was this.

It was only three years ago that it all started to change. Before that - well ....... least to say it wasn't as much fun as what has come after and we shall just leave it at that. It wasn't that my circumstances had massively improved, nothing in my external environment got better (quite the opposite). What had changed, quite simply, was me.

As I write this, I am listening to some great house music, specifically: Eddy meets Yannah, Reach The Sky, Reel People, the main mix. For those few passersby who might not know me personally, in another part of my life I am a house DJ. Something else that really started three years ago. I am a mix DJ - for me there is only one greater solitary passion than the words expressed here. It's making, mixing, playing, listening to and dancing to house music. It's a feeling. When I balance two pieces of this wonderful, soulful, polyrhythmic, loving genre of music together successfully, riding the groove, there is a joy that fills me like no other. I used to say that the only time I ever really felt free was when I am playing. I am glad to say that after recent events that is no longer the case. I am free.

The lyric of this track is significant to this tale. I always loved the tune but something in the lyric always puzzled me. There is a line that states, without irony, "there is a superhero in all of us". I never really understood that until recently and, for what my opinion may be worth, I now think the writer was referring to that part of the human soul which is capable of giving and receiving apparently limitless love.

A friend recently reminded me of a mutual conversation some months ago, and I quote her words: "TRYING to be a good person MAKES you a good person." While this may sound trite there is also a deep truth to it. The act of trying is what makes you a better person. It's like life, trying. It's not a destination. Its a journey.

To anyone reading who hasn't tried this ............ you might want to give it a shot.

Realisations and endings

What do you do when the penny finally drops, when the person you loved turns out to have been interested in the fun times but disappears when the going gets tough.

Well, you make excuses for them, you look at the circumstances... you UNDERSTAND.

What you didn't really understand is the conclusion you should have come to and its simple.

"While I love this person, they don't really love me, or at least not to the same depth"

From that, its easy to see that the relationship just doesn't work (no shit Sherlock!) with a 90%/10% split on compromises and the shots always theirs to call.

I only really get one call in this and I just exercised it.

Its over

Goddess of simplicity

You showed me goodness
Where I thought none remained
The lesson you taught me, saved me
For it opened a path to life

So today, in the misty overcast
I watched you walk away
Waving generously, smiling widely
Mended after last nights events

I love you dearly and will miss you greatly

A funny old life

Marko's Women

I like women a lot, I love their complexity, their grounded nature, their capacity (like all of us) to be so often misunderstood even by themselves.

But most of all, and in particular, I have a great fondness and feel great attraction to women with a capacity for laughter, a good understanding of themselves and a deep understanding of the people around them. Wise women. I am not a leg, breast or arse biased man. I just love wise women.

There are other women I have loved, for other reasons. Some remain friends. After the grande passionalle depicted in purple prose elsewhere in this blog, I found another deep, strong, true love, finally, you see.

It has been a great, wonderful, beautiful and quite heartbreakingly brief time, ladies but I know I am loved and return that love in full - the love of an equal, the love of a friend, the love of an "in another time/on another planet lover".

I must name them, my loves.

Ming, old friend, first among the true band of Marko's women. I salute your strength, your principles, your boundless compassion for others, your generosity with wisdom.

Aza, the saviour of my soul, deeply spiritual and with a heart big enough to pump an ocean.

Lari, wise in self knowledge, high of principle, and with foundations so strong you could park a supertanker on them.

MJ, the irrepressible spirit. I see behind the clown as well you know. Nothing in there is anything but beautiful babes.

Alles, a late but deep arrival. My doppelganger, in petite, young, female form. A troublemaker born and true and ever in the service of others. You are wise beyond your years.

I know you love me, feel that love, return that love.

Yes, I finally got it

A Funny Old Life










.

I was meaning to ask .......

Mum….
I meant to ask you.
But you being dead
These 22 years made that
A little hard and before
Well, thats another story

I wondered you see
Since I am so uncertain on the matter
As to whether you ever loved me?
When little I tried to show you
That I loved you but
You pushed me away, stopped me talking.

I thought it time
To ask: I may be
Coming by quite soon
And knowing that
You like to think about
Things, I ask ahead of time.

I know, when you were dying
I was only 500 miles away
I could only visit once a month, no money,
A new wife, pregnant with our first and only child.
Ironic, don’t you think, that you find me
Crushed under the wheels of karma

This is another of those "best not to publish" works 17:10 Sat 30th Jan 2010.

A Funny Old Life

Fin de cycle

The cooking of food for your father, eating food prepared by your son - these are important events in a man's life.

I never cooked for my father .... given that he was a chef of some renown, and terribly demanding of the kitchens of the hotel's he ran, I would not have dared. There was a time when I was getting to know him well enough to think of mustering the courage but then he died, very suddenly. I have always, somewhat wistfully, regretted that missed opportunity.

Tonight my son cooked the dinner. He tackled a dish I have never tried to prepare, Gumbo, and made an excellent job of it.

I feel very proud of him and extremely glad that we had the opportunity to experience this joint rite of passage.

The Gumbo weren't bad either ........

A Funny Old Life

Attack of the killer green blobs

I see her name
With Green beside it
The first time in many months

I jangle with emotion
Twice I open a box to type
Twice I close it, message unsent

I am blocked on
All her accounts
Bar this one, rarely used

Is she trying to tell
Me something
Or chatting to a relative in Oz

I gave my word

I shall not

A Funny Old Life

The end of a funny old life

I felt the chill in my bones way back in early December. It no longer disappears when I am warm and has become an ache. Tonight its uncomfortable enough that I cannot sleep. I know this for what it is.....

The disease, it would appear, has not gone dormant but has spread to its other favourite haunt, the bone marrow.

This also means that time has become short. I don't know whether to post this or not. Do I spare my friends from what may just possibly be my fears? I shall not post it but time and date it below. I suspect it may be one of several.....

Written 05:05 Sunday 17th january 2010

Musings during connection deprivation Part 1

I have come to love
This child inside of me
I love him since he has this enormous
Sense of fun, almost devilment

He cavorts in my thoughts
Making mischievous suggestions
At highly inappropriate times

The protector, well
A bit difficult really
Respect the competence, the relentlessness
But I don't always like it
My conscience drives
Which when you know how I drive
Is quite worrying

I think ethical self determination might be the best word
Twisted by the need to stabilise, to survive
Self Control Freak, I salute you

So in amongst this, who am I
This integrating meta-being
This will o the wisp
This analogue cipher
In a digital life
This spirit oft damped
As playfulness fought with duty
The collateral damage?

I do know I am a calming voice
When my thoughts are tumultuous
It is I that calms me, not adventure, not control

For I am love

A Funny Old Life

Dont try this at home ..........

The M74 in a dangerously slippery condition at 2 am.

If you don't know how to drive on snow at more than 5 mph, specifically: if you haven't been taught how and don't have the right vehicle (hint - this isn't a 3 ton 4x4) - don't try to learn on the highway. In fact.......

Just don't do it.

Someone sent me this a while back.......

SONNET XLV
DON'T GO FAR OFF, NOT EVEN FOR A DAY

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.
Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.
Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,
because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here,
dying?