Easter brief recap

I still don't trust this happiness, I'm still treating it with a wary caution, but maybe, just maybe, I'm starting to consider it may be true. I've exorcised my doubts, and more will come but I will handle that, and...optimistic. We got together Monday night, after resisting more than friendly embraces the entire day, ducking gazes that lingered too long, but I've written about that already. Tuesday we met up with Spetch, walked into Lostwithiel. Hamish slipped under the gate somehow and followed, and i had to use a piece of twine wrapped around a fence post as a lead. Loving the fact that when that dog snapped at him he snapped right back, being under half it's size! Down to the river, past the moored boats, past the playing fields, through the wild apple trees out onto the floodplain, then through a natural tunnel made by flowering blackthorn, as though snow had settled on their twisted branches. Then the land ended where a small waterway joined the river Fowey as a wide expanse of mud. Somehow the boys decided that the gravel patch nearer thewater was firm ground and resolved to get to it.Much tramping around and nearly falling over in the mud then trudging upriver to try and cross there then giving up and starting again later, they decided that laying down branches to walk across would provide them with enough supportto get to the other side. So a branch was pulled out of the mud and laid down. then another. Then they ran out and had to go and search for wood. Cash came back carrying a sizeable branch. Spetch came back carrying half a felled tree! They were halfway across their new bridge when it was time to go, so we never found out how functional it would have been. Spetch seemed...quiet. Not sure why. He was chatty enough when we were walking, but...yeah, when we got back to mine he had slipped into a kind of abruptness. That evening we went out under the stars again, sat in the hidden garden and talked. He instigated, and must have spoken for about an hour and a half - there was something in him that needed to unload, so I sat silent and let him. He confessed his lie to me, nervously but he did it, and I'm proud of him for doing so. He needed to know that I was okay with it, he needs to realise there's very little he could do that would drive me away. He needs to know that being honest will be appreciated and not get him in trouble. He'll feel better about himself that way. Wednesday met up with Rebekah, pasty count = 2, both Cash and Rebekah took the piss out of my incompetance when it comes to shopping. Euganie kicked him in the balls, but otherwise seemed quite amused by him and his stubble. Went out to Sam's restaurant that evening, he was delighted with the place and spent most of the evening discussing various musicians with my parents. We went to the Talbot afterwards, and there seemed some tension in the air but that soon disipated, especially once Ben and Miguel were free from their previous conversations and engaged Cash in tales of Medsoc - both got really interested and Miguel threatened to come round so Cash could show him how to use the bow (he did, on Saturday). Went back to Laura and Alex's afterwards, and ended up walking home at about midnight. He's said he wasn't a fan of the night, which became apparent. Just used to greater light levels, and wasn't familier with the terrain, and I resolved to carry a torch on me more often. I prefer walking at night without a torch, it seems to me just a great way to advertise your position and your discomfort with the dark, and you lose the sensations you get at night if you use artificial light, but no matter.He needs the light more than I need the dark. Thursday, dental appointment in Padstow, stayed afterwards and had pasty no.3+4. Just spent about an hour and a half wandering around the town, getting ice-cream and harmonica and looking at all the bric-a-brac shops, then walked to Wadebridge, which took two hours and earned a fair few blisters. The walk was beautiful though, the way decorated with spring flowers and we stopped for a bit to stare down some baby rabbits. Ended up having coffe then checking out the Kernow harvest shop - note - Gordan Bennett. Laura phoned asking if we wanted to go out that evening so we went bowling - the boys were pleased because they beat us, Laura was just pleased she beat SOMEONE once. :D Scary amount of food later at pizza hut, and arranged to go surfing the next day. tbc...

The right decision

Kathy wants to see me, we've arranged to meet on Monday at 5. So many people who care about me, I somehow seem to have earned the love and loyalty of so many amazing people. I ended up crying at Kathy's! So far I've spent Monday and Thursday with Rebekah and Euganie - Spetch and Luke visited Rebekah's on Thursday too, then after I had my spine crunched I went to Spetch's. Sitting at his windowsill talking, incense in the air, this time round it was me fractured and not sure where to turn. Some of my stories made him laugh, some of them made him angry and indignant. It's a good job the stories are edited, else I'm sure there would be rage too.There is an odd peace I find at Rebekah's. It's neither so fierce and all-encompassing as my woods,or as mentally grounding as at Spetchs, but...even though running round after an incredibly active 1 year old should by rights be exhausting...it's not. It's nourishing in ways I can't describe but I think people will understand anyway.With everything invested into the wellbeing and love of someone so totally innocent, so totally dependant, so totally precious - it's peaceful. Nothing matters but Euganie.Someday I will be a mother.It's...odd to think that had I not, I could be. A relief and a sadness all at once.What of where I've been for the past few months? The sense that I've made the right decision strengthens daily here. I tried to pretend I was okay with the way things were - after all, what did I matter? What did my pain matter when others had been through so much. Surely it was selfish to want soemthing else, selfish to be hurt?But I wasn't okay with it, and altruism only gets you so far, and staying true to myself is the better course, the only course I should consider. Because the way I was going was destroying me. I had no worth, and trust you I do, but not with that. There are things I hope you've forgotten, that I've made myself overlook, that I won't mention to anybody. But they're there and they prey on me even now. The only thing I can do for that is to watch.I'll give anything to make you okay. Even myself. But if I don't stay true to myself, then I am not myself, and I have not myself to give. So I have to deny myself and deny you to be able to be anything, have any worth or self respect, and aid you at all. And I am so much better than what I became recently, so much stronger than that. Events? People? I shape them. Not the other way round. Circumstance and events are mine to craft, people aren't reliable enough to make things okay. Why should I, how dare I look to others to make things okay? I took their advice, sat back, watched things fall apart instead of investing myself into making them better, and guess what? They got worse. Their advice was well-intentioned but it was wrong, and I need to remember that I am the only reliance I need.You need to listen to this. You need to heed this. You need to follow your own guidelines. Don't let others set them for you. You set yourself something to do. So do it. It gets easier after the first time. Trust me it does. Because right now you won't do anything, you wont take action to fix yourself unless someone else tells you to do it. These are your battles to fight, not mine. And tired from the fight, I'm also tired of your anger when I hold you up, tired of your meekness, your placidity, when you'll just lie down and take whatever you're given.Yes, it would be...amazing, to be able to look to someone else to make things okay. I would love to be protected, looked after, cherished. But it's a dream, and a foolish dream at that, for one such as me. It's a dream I won't pander to anymore.For we are not equals.And romance? Will remain a treasured notion, a protected dream. Is all.There is no-one stronger than me. There is no-one more capable of shaping events around me than me. Well, perhaps there is one. But he is out of the equation.So you'll find me changed, I hope. Less fractured. You all will. But don't presume to tell me what I am, for I know it better than you know yourselves.In that, I know I always over-estimate my strength. If you think I'm falling, I probably have been for a while. If you think I need looking after, you're probably right. Just don't let me know that you're looking after me. You'll get no-where if you do.I...have finished what I need to say. For now.I just hope that you're okay.

I am not a stranger here

I am not a stranger here. Parts of me that for half a year have been dormant are seeping back into place. The constant fear and worry that Lampeter has marked me with is ebbing. I don't think it will go though. I find myself going cold at thoughts of what might befall my friends, guilty that I can do even less here than I could whilst with them. But I am not a stranger here. The months have not changed me enough to change the shape of who I am, I still fit into the life I built here. Walking Wednesday night I had...not an epiphany exactly, but a realisation of sorts, back from Alex and Laura's...I love walking at night. I never walk with a torch - even if I carry one I never turn it on. Thoughts of how to merge my two lives, how to strike the balance I've been needing were heavy, but not painful. The Poldew stream was my constant voal companion along the entire way home, and only one car passed, sheilding my eyes on the way I'm used to. The moon was only half full yet still bright enough to cast tree shadows, so still was the night that I could discern the individual twigs in the moonshadows. The woods still remember. They were watching me, unsure at first, and some things have changed...the ground is dark with bluebell foliage, the branches are nude with winter, a few great branches have fallen with the storms I've missed, more that I could not tell at night, but I still belong. No threat in the shadows of the trees, the darkness holds no fear for me, my footsteps near silent on the soft leaves from last year. I stood for a while, my arms pale in the moonlight, fingers like wan spiders against the dark moss on the beech, the oak, every guard that I visited. Old ferns, torn and toughgreeted me, young when last I saw them. It's...not hard, but a little trying to hold to that sensation, that sense of stillness, that everything will be alright. I haven't been still for so long, and couldn't remain in the calm of the woods for long either,but it's there for me, waiting. And pale primroses line the hedge as I walked, and naturalised daffodills, their scents both subtle and sharp. The road is narrow, I would not mind if it had gone on til sunrise. Boughs of hazel and ash, oak and beech, lean over the aged tarmac to form a bower, a mesh, a tunnel through which I and I alone walk. I haven't been alone in so long I had forgotten. My identity is in these woods, in these rocks, this soil, the sweet flowering of wild plants, the soft rustling of small creatures in the undergrowth, the steady drip of damp hedgerows and the distraction of the water. A deer startled by my head on the other side of the hedge, a young buck I think, small but adult in form. He darted a few paces then turned to watch me, gauging the threat, before tossing back his head, no more than a dark silhouette against pale winter grassland and shadowed holly and hazel and picking his way through what I know are dead fireweed, cow parsley, lesser burdock and the bramble that is devouring that abandoned meadow. There is no sadness here. Memories both painful and happy dissipate, leaving just what is. Even in pitch black, I can always find my way home. I just hope that canbe applicable to the rest of my life as well.