The sins of youth

At the weekend I went to spend what I thought would be a pleasant evening in the cinema, watching an interpretation of a classic Oscar Wilde novel, Dorian Gray. The mistake I made was clearly that I had not read the book and was therefore unaware of how utterly terrifying the film was going to be. I spent most of it with my head buried in my jumper and there came a point where I simply didn't want to watch anymore because I knew it could only end badly!

All this, plus other events, got me thinking. I ended up feeling very sorry for poor Dorian at the end of the film. He desperately wanted to undo his sordid past and repented for his sins. However that was not enough because ultimately he couldn't rewrite history and not murder, chop up and sink one of his friends. He was led astray by someone who he thought was a friend and who basically got off scot free while he was left to pay the price in an immensely tragic way.

I suppose the thing is that, whilst an extreme example of paying for your sins, this is really true of real life. Dorian was taught by his so called friend to follow a hedonistic lifestyle, doing what he wanted when he wanted and with no thought of the consequences. This seems to be exactly what most of us seem to do as youngsters. We often pay little regard to the thoughts of others and simply do what we want with no fear of consequences. The trouble is that we cannot undo our actions once we have done them.

I myself certainly made choices when I was younger that I now wish I could undo, mostly whilst strongly under the influence of enough vodka to floor a Rhino. These split second actions that I regreted almost immediately upon waking with a stinking hangover cannot be undone as easily as they were done however. Consequences usually last a lot longer than the hangover as I am sure most of us have learnt to our detriment.

Society teaches us that we should tell the whole truth about our sins but I question who we are really doing this for. Dorian seemed to believe that by being sorry he could somehow fix what he had done but of course it couldn't. If you have hurt someone then being sorry about it does not fix it (especially in Dorians case where the 'someones' in question had ended up dead!). If being sorry about something does not fix it then how on earth can telling the whole truth if that would in the end cause more hurt. Surely the only way to even try to fix our wrong actions is to do our best to be better in the future, not to look for absolution from the corruptions of the past that will never truly come.  

The sins of youth, then, are those actions done with no thought of the consequences, in fact with no real thought at all. We cannot wipe the slate clean, we cannot undo them, but must instead live with the knowledge of them, or the consequences. They are not always entirely our fault, but blame is not necessarily always attributed proportionately to fault. Some people hold on the blame far longer than others - others can truly forgive and forget.

If people are unable to forget the misdemeanours of others, perhaps the phrase 'He who casts the first stone' should be considered. We are all hurt by the Sins of Youth, both our own and others.

The Big Adventure

A year ago I made a silly decision. I decided that the best thing I could do with my six months off before starting work was to spend 3 of them getting eaten alive by bed bugs and suffering severe Tea withdrawal symptoms mixed in with a bit of  running away from Spiders in a country where theres actually a good reason for running away from them. Then I decided that I should throw in some walking through a jungle with the equivalent of about 10 bricks on my back.

All this of course is the glamorous life of a shoestring backpacker. Quite why I decided this was a good idea when my idea of 'slumming it' is not having a powerpoint for my hair straightners I am not sure. I think somewhere in the back of my mind was the idea that I would at some point over the summer morph into a svelte and sporty hippie with a desire to do nothing else than trek through jungle and sleep in bunk beds. Unfortunately with 3 weeks to go this is still yet to happen.

I am obviously looking forward to the trip - I cannot wait to see amazing places and do amazing things and to share them all with hubby-to-be. I just wish that it wasn't going to involve quite so many hostels and a diet of bread and butter if the budget is anything to go by! I am sure that once I am there I will never want to leave - except perhaps to come home for a decent cup of tea!

The reality is that at heart I am a home person. I love nothing better than a night curled up in front of the tele with a game of scrabble and two cats curled on our laps. None of which I expect to be getting in the outback of Australia. Before even leaving I am imagining how great it will be to get home in the cold of January and snuggle up on the sofa! I will miss my cats dreadfully - and my mum - but the small concellation of course will be that I will be a sufficiently long way away from the in-laws to recover from the trauma of living with them and perhaps remember what lovely people they are really!

So I am looking forward to going away, and coming home again. I don't think I will ever get the 'travel bug' and pack my nice warm home and job in to travel the world  - but I suppose you never know till you try!!

Weddings

Well I am currently in the early stages of planning my Wedding and I have to admit that as everyone says I can already see it becoming one of the most stressful things I have ever done. I guess that this is due almost entirely down to the fact that so many people need to be happy with a wedding. Whereas in a relationship it is only the two of you that need to be happy, when it comes to the actual wedding, there are 2 sets of potential inlaws to be kept happy, plus extended family, family friends and a potential mindfield of people to annoy in the process.

Personally I was all for a beach, our parents and a couple of our closest friends however I couldn't find it in me to refuse my fiancee's desire for a 'traditional' wedding. After all it is his wedding too and I think he has probably dreamt about it since he was a little boy!

So never mind that I could probably buy a brand new car with the budget for one day, or that I will probably have to feed an expensive dinner to several people I would really rather throw the dinner over  - we are having a big (well medium-sized) white wedding and I will just have to resist the urge to start a food fight mid-wedding!

Weddings are funny things. They are apparently things that people spend their whole lives dreaming about but surely they are missing the point. What is one day compared to a whole lifetime of marriage. Surely we should be dreaming about that rather than one day. Perhaps it is because a wedding is romantic and glamorous and all about an extreme show of love. Whereas a long term relationship whether a marriage or not, is not romantic or glamorous - it involves picking up dirty socks and compromising the things you want to do to make someone else happy. It is strange then that when we desire romance and glamour, picking up the dirty socks is, in the long run, a lot more rewarding!

The value of stuff

Recently, I have been having a clear out. I am always being told I have too much stuff, and living at the in-laws for three months with practically no stuff I have realised that those people are right. I am bogged down by too much stuff that I don't need - I should just get ruthless and throw away. Plus I need the money for the big adventure and at this rate am not going to be able to afford rent next year anyway so if I don't have a place to live I definitely don't need a sofa to go in it!

Sorting my stuff out is easy. Much harder however has been sorting out my dads study. It has been left virtually untouched since the month he died in which I went through and found all the utilities bills etc for my mum and arranged them in folders after I change them into her name. It was, however, in great need of a good sort out and full of stuff - I may well have got my inability to throw stuff away inherited from my dad!

Whereas with my stuff it is just stuff, with my Dads it seems to be so much more than that. It is the only tangible evidence I have of his life, that he was ever here, and contains hidden information about him that he never got to tell me. Throwing anything away still seems wrong. I have now sorted the study into a neat and clean space for my mum, and removed all auction/ebay stuff to the spare room. The study was the one part of the house that was really 'dads space' and I feel now like I have erased it - put something different on top. I suppose that, while the study remained the same there was some faint irrational hope that one day I would just find him sitting in it like nothing happened. It is another stage in moving on and something that doesn't yet feel anything other than painful, like I am somehow losing more of him with every thing of his I give away, ever old bank statement I throw away, every piece of furniture I rearrange.

With the pain of this however, does come some good. Going through his stuff I have been able to feel closer to him again, just for a short time. This 'stuff' contains all I have left of his life - the life before me and after. I found his old school reports, and black and white photos of him as a child. I wish I could have seen some of this stuff while he was alive - to have him tell me the stories of the photos, the badges and all the other things. But since I found pretty much everything except that jar with a genie in I know that won't happen, so I have to take second best and have made a box of 'memories' with the bits and pieces I don't want to throw away. Best of all I found his wallet which still smells of him, and putting it in the box has given the whole box the same faint smell. So whenever I want to I can go and look in that box, smell him, see the stuff and remind myself that he's still here, in some small way.

So maybe theres more to stuff than we think - after all its really the only tangible thing we leave behind.

House buying Rollercoaster

I think it is fair to say that most everyone these days agrees that our system for buying and selling houses is fatally flawed and, frankly, pretty rubbish! Nowhere else in the world has the insane system where you wait months after agreeing a deal to be legally bound into the contract, and where inevitable unmoral tactics are so very common.

Recently, I have been on the receiving end of the flaws in the system. My mum recently saw and fell in love in love with a beautiful new house in a cute little village near where I grew up. So she decided to put her house on the market and try and buy it. Put it on the market she did and a couple of weeks later she had a couple round who brought their little girl back the same day as they first saw the house for a second viewing. An offer followed - low, but we negotiated. A couple of days later we were settled on a deal everyone seemed happy with. The couple were in rented accomodation so the sale seemed pretty safe. We paid a reservation fee on the new house and my mum began planning where she would put furniture, pictures, crockery etc.!

A week later we got a call from the estate agents. The couple had changed their mind about the house after deciding they wanted to do too much work to it. Disaster. My mum was obviously very disappointed. After gearing herself up to move she was suddenly faced with having to readjust to most likely having to stay put. Of course this is a common thing in our house buying system - some might say even inevitable in the current economical situations - everyone is unwilling to commit to large purchases.

Today I got a call saying that the couple had had a further change of heart and would like to reinstate their original offer. I must admit that my reaction to this was to laugh - surely it takes an unbelievable lack of careful thought to see a house, decide you want it, put in an offer, then think it through and decide you don't want to buy the house, then think that through and decide you do want the house. Surely somewhere someone should have told them to think first and offer later.

Of course the dilemma now is simple. If my mum wants the new house she must trust people who have already let her down not to do so again, and accept their offer. However, she won't be safe for several weeks and in the meantime will have to shell out 1000s in surveys, solicitors fee etc. The risk is that these people were playing a game all along - pulling us into the purchase before pulling out in the hope that we would drop the price. They could, of course, get right the way to the day of exchange and then drop the price they will pay by 10,000, or more.

All in all, it is a tricky business this house buying lark. After all this I think I have learnt my lesson - never get emotionally involved in a house until you have the keys in your hand. Being  me of course this is difficult to do - I would never consider buying a house I wasn't emotionally attached to as it wouldn't be the house for me if I didn't love it. So basically - the property system sucks. But then I knew that already. But what I didn't know before was that a stream at the bottom of the garden is amazingly sweet and peaceful.....!

Its a cats life

I have decided recently, that I would really rather like to be a cat, you know, if I was given a choice!

In chineses legend the cat inherited dignity from its mother, the lioness, and curiosity and playfulness from its father, the monkey.  I have two cats and really they have all the fun in life. They are house cats, and spend approximately 2/3rds of their time sleeping, and 1/3 creating mischief, either with each other as the targets or on a joint mission of destruction.

Now I feel that this lifestyle would suit me perfectly. Firstly, I love sleeping. It is perhaps my favorite pastime and the opportunity to do more of it would be a bonus. If you have watched a sleeping kitten you will know that there is nothing more beautifully peaceful or serene than this, and you will also know the amazing ability of a cat to appear to stay fast asleep whilst starting to purr loudly if you stroke their tummy.

Secondly, it seems to me a cat is always satisfied with what it has. Yesterday I spent more than an hour building an elaborate cat tree - only to find my two cats, after showing some interest, curled up in their usual sleeping spots ignoring the new plush ones. They had simply looked at the new tree with some curiosity and then decided that their old spot smelt more like home. So I cat never wants new gadgets and gizmos - they love the old worn things best because they smell better.

Thirdly, cats are satisfied with the simplest food sources. Being house cats, my two are deprived of the opportunity to try (and fail) to catch the odd bird. Nonetheless, undetered they have settled on a classic example of failing to adhere to that old adage 'pick on something your own size' - they have developed a taste for gourmet spider - preferably without legs if the remains I find on the carpet are anything to go by. They seem totally satisfied that their hunting abilities are up to scratch however  - and i'm hardly going to tell them that cat vs spider is hardly a fair match!

So, as I said, I have decided that being a cat is actually a rather appealing option - after all they are clearly a superior species than us - not for cats the drudgery of work and long days, for them the peacefulness of sleep and the contentment of a full stomach of spiders. (ps. they've also been known to be partial to the odd fly!)

I will leave you with two of my favorite quotes: Author Unknown

"In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods. They have never forgotten this."

"To a dog you are family, to a cat you're staff."

Numbness

A year ago, I lost my father. It happened very quickly, one minute he was there and the next he was gone. There are aspects of my loss I am not ready to share with anyone yet, even via the ether of the net. However I feel that sometimes writing can be a great healer - so I will talk about how I feel these days.

The months following my dads death when I could think of nothing else except him, feel nothing except pain, and replayed that day he died a million times wishing I could change it - those months have thankfully blurred in my memory, the pain perhaps too acute to be remembered accurately.

These days however, I sometimes wonder whether it is ever possible for the world to look the same again. Or more importantly, for me to ever feel the same again. I function now as if nothing had ever happened. I doubt anyone who didn't know would ever know. On the inside however, everything is very different. I have what I think can only be described as a black hole. It sucks away the happiness and leaves emptiness. For the majority of the time there is no pain, just a void of feeling through which an occasional stab of pain breaks the monotomy and reminds me that I am capable of emotion.

One thing people have begun to pick up on recently is my lack of excitment about thing they perceive I should be looking forward too. In fact this is one of the things my in-laws have used as a stick to beat me with. I think that emotion is one that I am simply currently incapable of.

Maybe the numbness I am experiencing is simpy another shut-off mechanism, like my blurring memory. Perhaps it is a more sinister sign that I have begun to associate feeling really happy with disaster. The last time I ever saw my dad, when I left him I drove back to my new flat and took the back route along the country lanes to enjoy the spring lane. I remember feeling like I had everything in the world I could ever want. After he died I felt like by being that happy and having everything I wanted in the world it was somehow my fault. 10 months later I felt a moments happiness, the first since he had died, sledding down slopes on a map at midnight. A week later my precious kitten, named after my dad, was having open heart surgery. I felt that same feeling, like it was my fault because I had been happy for a moment.

I no longer know which is the overwhelming force behind my total numbness. I know that at the moment the huge part of my life that is missing means I cannot feel really happy as there is a constant sadness within me. But there is also a fear that feeling happy would bring more pain.

Fear

Fear is something that has always confused me - I understand the basic concept of course, that our brain is programmed to produce a reaction to prevent us from getting hurt in potentially dangerous situations and situations in which we have been hurt previously. In this sense I obviously have a connection missing somewhere as I suffer from what can really only be described as irrational fears.

Firstly, I have a strong fear of needles. By this I do not mean that I don't like needles (lets face it who likes having a needle stuck in them?) - I mean that the sight of a needle can make me shake with fear and an injection can reduce me to tears. Now this fear I can actually understand - I have had some pretty unpleasant experiences with needles in the past including a particularly unpleasant lumber puncture. So I could perhaps forgive myself this fear were I not recently forced to have a series of 12 injections over a few hours - during which I realised that they don't actually hurt that much. Great, I can imagine you thinking, cured! In fact, I am just as afraid as ever - only now I recognise it as an irrational fear. I suppose thats a step in the right direction!

My biggest fear however is by far the most crippling - I am terrified of flying. Every time I have to fly I get myself to the airport and onto the plane by simply ignoring what I am actually going to do. As soon as the plane moves I am hit with an overwhelming urge to run screaming to the front yelling "get me off, get me off". However, I sit quietly, read the paper and tell myself I am still on dry land. When the engines power up for takeoff it is only the fact that I am surrounded by 200+ people who would be very annoyed at me which prevents me from making them stop the plane so I can get off.

Take-off is hell. I have now learnt the best way to cope is simply to close my eyes and bury my head in the person next to me - which thankfully is usually my partner! This is a significant improvement on a few years ago, when said partner once stated he was never getting on a plane with me again after I suffered from a panic attack and began hyperventilating mid take-off.

Once I am up in the air and the seatbelt signs are off however I morph back into a normal human being and relax to a more or less normal level of panic - I simply don't think about the fact that I am in the air and manage to just about fool my brain into thinking I am safe.

Panic sets in once again during landing. In the intervening years since my fear began I have not been as successful at controlling my fear during landing as I have with the take-off. I am still prone to tears and a heartbeat somewhere in the region of that obtained during a vigorous game of squash. The relief I feel once I am on the ground is indescribable - it practically makes me giddy with joy!

Of course the problem with all this - apart from the several hours of endured hell spent on the plane, is that it ruins any holiday I ever take. The preceding month or so before the trip I spend with a quite worry at the back of my mind, and the actual holiday I spend with an acute awareness that I have to get back on a plane to return home again. All this leads to the fact that often the best part of a holiday for me is getting home and having a large cup of tea.

The strange thing about this fear is that it really appears to have no root. My dad was an airline pilot and I spent much of my early years on planes bound for various places. I loved planes. They meant going places and seeing things. There is no particular experience that I can pinpoint as causing the fear, although I know when it started. At 14, on a flight to Egypt I simply became afraid. My dad thought I had lost the plot I think, although he patiently sat with me and explained all the noises which suddenly terrified me, and how the airplane was working to stay in the air, go up, go down, turn etc. The outcome of all this is that I now understand what all the scary noises are. Unfortunately I still find them scary.

The point that I am trying to make here is that I know the fear I experience is totally irrational. The noises I hear terrify me, although I know that they are normal. I suffer from a truly crippling fear that the plane I am on will crash - and nothing rational like the fact that airplanes are safer than cars will get in the way of that. Perhaps my fear has become a phobia by virtue of being truly irrational.

People look at me like I am an idiot when I say I am afraid of flying and say things like 'its safer than crossing the road'. Of course they miss the point. I know that. Unfortunately somewhere in my unconscious clearly disagrees with that statement and thinks that there is nothing more suicidal than being 35000 feet in the air in a chunk of metal being held up by nothing but air!

I suppose it could be worse of course - I know someone with a crippling phobia of clowns. Do they not know its just a person in silly face paint?