Rings around the moon.

Just when I thought it was all over. I honestly don't know what to do about what is happening. But this madness has to stop. Psychosis is understandable, it is human, it's fierce and terrifying, but it is immediate and alive. This - the thing I'm trying to deal with here and now is way worse...and I don't know how to deal with it.  I fought one round with it (1988- 1990), and left my home burning (!) no, nothing was burning. I simply let him (my first husband) have everything, didn't ask for a penny. And I made sure that all blame could be levelled at me. This was important. I gave my first husband a narrative that side-stepped his lethal victimhood and inability to blame his abuser. I had to keep my daughters alive, I had to get out without causing him to blame himself. And I did it. I managed to create another life, and on we went. With my second husband, with our open doors, home-ed and kids everywhere, people were amazed at what a happy family we were. Three chi...

This recording was made in 2019.  My husband... I was still trying to process what had happened - how he had stayed behind after work to have sex with a colleague. When I made this recording he had promised that the relationship was over. Except? It really didn't feel like it! And I needed to know the truth.  I didn't feel loved, I certainly didn't feel valued. I also felt terror. I had believed that I'd only got through what had happened because I knew that I was loved....if that wasn't so, if I wasn't loved, then how could I continue... The audio recordings were instrumental in my recovery.  Truth creates choice. I'd urge anyone going through awful experiences to make the recordings, keep them safe, and when it's all over - listen to them. It is truly a difficult thing to face, and it took me many listens to begin to hear that one person requesting emotional truth from another, isn't out of order... This lesson segments into what came next! [+] Loo...

It has been four years and I don't know where he is. I know he works at the same place. I assume that he is living with her. I believe that he is playing happy families - again. Having shed his role of dad for his own son, to playing daddy for her younger (not yet psychotic)  kids. This is his tried and tested method for being a better person, better than the man he has replaced. And who has he replaced? Her husband and himself - by stepping into a different family - again. I have fantasies of following his car to find out. Perhaps I'm so wrong. Perhaps he is heartbroken and living alone, swigging whiskey and still reading Jack Reacher books. Or perhaps he has become someone I could respect? I have three friends who would love to help me to do this!  I'd wear a headscarf, and different glasses and sit in the passenger seat. Would he notice? As an unfamiliar car shadows his Golf? Does he still have the Golf? A blue Golf. He bought it just before leaving.  God damn!  W...

"Synchronicities take you to the edge, but no further;  the message is received but the source hidden.  Beyond the uncanny crackle of the signal you have to make a leap" Erik Davis. 3 am.  I feel as if I'm covered in static electricity, St Elmo's fire.  I am unsure of myself.  The feeling is of darkness.  And of being swept away.  Of walking a labyrinth, a spinning void. To a place beyond the stars. What happened? Hours earlier, as the lights came up and everyone started to leave, we stood for about ten minutes trying to exchange phone numbers - my phone refusing to do RCS - I was trying to write his number into Google Keep.  Neither of us were thinking straight.  We had just seen Tool. Hours later - 3 am, 31st of May 2024 - my feelings were making even less sense. Sure, a lot had already happened already that day but.. But at 3 am I couldn’t even tell if I was feeling my own feelings. I am used to picking up other people's emotions as sensat...

I am mapping the land in which I live.  My home is a Jenga tower. I take half my husband's salary until he stops me is one way to look at this . So, every month it could be that he has shifted his salary to another account and therefore I'd have no money. The other way to see this is, he needs to divorce me.  And I need him to believe that I'm broken, because that is safer. I earn money as a therapist sometimes . I can't earn money from where I had my placement until I get my qualification paperwork sorted out. I am waiting for my college to send me my certificate, and then I will be waiting for my professional body to confirm my qualification - and then I need to do their viva. The other place I work has run out of funding, so last month I earnt £30. So, let's say January, perhaps!  And then I can apply for jobs?  Roof leaks, things need replacing.  And there is a whole load of moldy baggage I could delve into about how most counsellors are middle class women s...

I am beginning to see the importance of keeping this blog. At the time, the process of writing was my security blanket, my game of let's pretend other people will recognize their feelings reflected within my words. My writing at those times was to say - this is survivable, I am surviving this. And now when I look back - I can remember how difficult things have been, but also how brave I was to dare put those awful experiences, and sometimes they were experiences of pure horror; into words. The belief that tragedy can be memorialized so that it may be celebrated, is my 'North Star', This is why I don't use a concept of past trauma as something to be understood to get to healing. A process of understanding  can be derailed by the power of recognition . And a  therapist who doesn't know how to go beyond this  absorption  - as experiences are suddenly reorganized around the new understanding - leaves his or her clients stuck with a polarized view. Because a po...