Like most children, when I was little I was irrationally scared of ‘monsters’. My personal demons were the monster under the bed, the Cybermen, the Sandman (horrific concept), and (bizarre, I know) the Roman Emperor Nero I can’t remember how I learned about Nero – it may well have been because I was aware of […]
Tag: sleep
Down
Sometimes I think the worst thing about what’s currently happening with E is the fact that, after everything he has already put me though, he is finally leeching the joy out of my life. Until now, whilst I’ve had bad days, I’ve generally managed to stay upbeat and positive and have usually kept going with my […]
Shaman
Yesterday evening I was lucky enough to interview a Shaman for the magazine that I work for. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences I’ve ever had. I won’t go into detail here (I’ll save those for the article I’m writing), but one of the things that stood out about our conversation was his […]
Open Letter
I’ve said before that one of the most frustrating things about what’s happened to me, has been the loss of my voice. In lying to me and about me, in creating a version of me to justify his actions, E robbed me of the ability to defend myself and to tell my truth. I very […]
Clouds
As May and June headed towards July, I began to feel that life was calming down and brightening up a bit – albeit with the odd cloud darkening our days every now and then. At the end of May, after I’d spent the best part of five months asking E to tell his parents what had […]
Blithbury
Blithbury (n.) A look someone gives you by which you become aware that they’re much too drunk to have understood anything you’ve said to them in the last twenty minutes.” – Douglas Adams and John Lloyd: The Deeper Meaning of Liff – After my sober March, I was now drinking again, but I was much […]
Stories
When we moved to Singapore the first proper storm we experienced – at 3am – resulted in a Sound of Music-esque scene, where, with each fresh crash of thunder, a different child ran barefoot into my room and threw themselves under my duvet. For those first few months my bed became a place of sanctuary […]
Dark Hours Symphony
It’s a very long time since I did O’ Level music (the fact that it was an O’ Level, not a GCSE, is indicative of exactly how long), but it occurred to me the other night (when I was wide awake, obvs) that my Dark Hours Anxiety has a particular pattern and follows an almost […]
He-total: Life without Ex 