Day 13 A Band or Artist That Has Gotten You Through Some Tough Ass Days. (write a letter.)

I am going to ignore the letter writing bit of this post because...well it just doesn’t work for me, this time, and because I can. Right now Luke would say that this is a prime example of my having ‘a problem with authority’ but I disagree, I think that this is a good example of my stubborn determination.

You can laugh all you want but the first band that comes to mind is...wait for it...ABBA.

Everyone laughs at me when I say this and if they're not laughing their eyebrows have disappeared into their hairline and they are fixing me with a look that clearly tells me they think I have dire taste in music.

That said I urge you to look beyond their cheesy sound, the husband/wife-swapping thing they had going on, their questionable clothes, which were considered fashionable at the time, and take a long hard look at their songs. I am completely confident that regardless of what you're going through - depression, a general funk, break up of a relationship, unrequited love, or if you're generally having a good time of things - you'll find a song that relates to your circumstances. Go on, google ABBA and run your eye down a song list, you'll be pleasantly surprised. ABBA never fails to make me smile. Not always for the right reasons but smiling is still smiling.

I can’t say that there is any one type of music that I prefer over another, what songs and what bands I listen to are dependent and dictated to by my moods. If you have a look on my ipod you’ll see everything from Dolly Parton to Metallica to Marilyn Manson to ABBA (obviously) to some 80s classics to Ben E. King and the Drifters. Eclectic to say the least but I have something for every mood, after all music does soothe the savage beast don’t you know.

The Home Coming

I spent the weekend with my mum this weekend gone and ...it was not what I had expected.

I'd planned this with her weeks ago, you see she had come to visit for a few days but her visit coincided with the last few days Luke and I had together before he went away for a month. Mum cut her visit short by a day in order to give us time together and I promised I would go to her for the weekend on her next weekend off. I have to admit it was a hasty promise and one I threw out there more because I was (felt) stuck between a rock and a hard place - Luke and my family - then from any real thought. Harsh, unfeeling and...no I am not proud of myself or my motives. I've always hated empty gestures and that was an empty gesture.

To say things have been strained and difficult between my mum and I lately is a bit of an understatement. I'm not attributing blame to any one in particular but between the two of us and a shocking lack of communication we managed to make an emotional time, in which we should have been there for each other, 100 times worse. One single fact is glaringly obvious now; we weren't there for each other, we pushed each other away (because we were hurting and to hurt in turn), and we withdrew completely from each other believing ourselves to be abandoned.

For a long time spending time with my mum only served as reminder of the hurt I felt whenever I looked at her and was in her company. I was reminded of what we had once shared and what we now had. It jarred me. It didn't feel right to feel like that, it hurt and it confused me and it made me angry and all felt horribly wrong. My mum has always been my best friend, she has always been there for me - no matter what I did or went through - she was the one person I always turned to first whenever something was upsetting me or I needed advice on.

And suddenly she wasn't. I'd needed her, really needed her like only a child who is hurting and confused and vulnerable can need their mother - instinctively and primally. And she let me down. I turned to her for help, for support and for understanding and she wasn't there. It hurts, still. Yet, I can't overlook my part in it either, I did all those things to her too.

For months I had been feeling so miserable, isolated, misunderstood, fearful and full of doubt. I don't know when exactly this started to change but recently I have felt less weighed down, less tearful, less negative about my life and relationships and less afraid to trust my instincts.

I came away from spending time with my mum this weekend sad to leave her and this isn't something that I have experienced in a long time. Before this weekend time with my mum had been fraught with tension and tangled emotions. May be it was the wine, may be it was something inside of me just letting go, may be it was that my need for her and the security that she represents finally outweighed everything else. I really couldn't say for certain and to be blunt...I don't care about the how and the why, it's taken long enough for me to get home and I just want to enjoy the home coming.

My mum is once again my mum and all that that encompasses for me, for us.

Day 12 Something You Never Get Compliments On.

I am never complimented on my stubborn determination, probably because this has a lot to do with the fact that when I am exercising my ability to be stubbornly determined it is usually in opposition to someone, or something.

Plus, when I am told I am being stubborn it is usually shouted at me in loud exasperation and coupled with hands being thrown up in the air, deep frown lines and finally a clenched jaw. If looks could kill this would be coming to you from beyond the grave.

Personally I think possessing stubborn determination is a positive thing, it means I am apt to drop my head to my chest and try even harder, which obviously means I am not a quitter. And not quitting is clearly a good thing.

...although if I think about it...just a little...I think more than one or two of my lecturers from university often wore long suffering expressions whenever my name was mentioned and might not agree. So, I guess not so much if you're on the receiving end of it.

Day 11 Something People Seem to Compliment You the Most on

That would be my sense of humour.

When I get angry, as in hissing and spitting like an alley cat angry, my dry sense of humour really comes out. So instead of my ranting and raving inducing the desired effect of sympathy and support I receive uncontrollable eye watering laughter.

I am assured that it apparently is my unique way of looking and phrasing things which is highly hilarious and not my predicament. So they tell me and I think I really have no other option than to believe them, but I am suspicious.

Day 10 Someone You Need to Let Go, or Wish You Didn’t Know

I gave this one a great deal of thought and initially was finding it difficult to think of some one that I could hate with such intense passion that I would genuinely and sincerely feel better erasing from my memory and life.

But I am a woman who listens to her instincts, which is the same as saying the voice that quietly and confidently tells me the truth, and so I heard a name whispered inside. His name is...not important - I want to name and shame him but instead I'm going exercise a restraint he doesn't deserve and let his actions speak for themselves.

After my mum split with my dad she soon found a new partner, hindsight makes me think it was too soon but mum would be the better judge of her heart and not I. In the beginning all seemed to be going well, however as time passed her new partner became more selfish and more demanding, he couldn't understand a mother putting her children before her partner. He resented her putting us first, he resented the closeness of the relationship she shared with her sister, he resented her need and desire for independence and so the pouring of poisonous words begun. He slowly but surely undermined all confidence she possessed in herself and her capabilities. He systematically destroyed any belief she had in herself and robbed her of all her pride in her successes or achievements. Phrases such as 'you can't do ...' and 'why would you want to when it isn't possible' and 'I don't believe you're capable' and 'you're not doing ... right' and 'no I won't do ... with you' and 'I won't help you' and 'I didn't know what I was doing it was the drink' and 'I don't remember' became tragically common place for mum.

He wanted control, he wanted to be the centre of her world and he would stop at nothing to chase away all rivals for her time, attention and affection, including her family and children.

Eventually mum realised their relationship had gone as far as it could, more importantly it had gone as far as she wanted it to and so she told him it was over and asked him to leave. He refused and merely moved in to the spare room. We sought legal advice and followed it - putting her request for him to leave in writing, approaching his daughters and asking for their help in what was proving to be a difficult situation. None of it worked. His daughters didn't want to get involved and he refused to let go. He wanted them to seek help for their relationship, he would make her change her mind, he would change - an empty promise heard dozens of times before - he was going to sue his company for the breakdown of their relationship, and how could she do this to him when he loved her.

Things came to a head when he returned home from work one afternoon to find mum going through bed linen and dividing it up, when he realised what she was doing he turned nasty. So he did what all desperate volatile low life scum do - he physically lashed out at her and hit her.

The rest of the details aren't significant and what I've condensed down to a few paragraphs actually took place over months. He made our lives miserable for months purely because he couldn't and wouldn't accept their relationship was over. As much I can...understand - and I do because I know he was that in love with my mum, that desperate to cling to her and change her mind he lost all ability to reason - I don't accept his behaviour and also find a great deal of fault with what he did in the name of love. I've said it before and I'll say it again love is just as destructive as it is nurturing.

So, if there is one person I can think of that I wish I had never met and never had the misfortune to know it would be him, not for the person he is but for his actions.

Day 09 Someone You Didn’t Want to Let Go, But Just Drifted.

Again this is an easy one - someone I didn't want to let go, but just drifted - every single one of my friends that I no longer keep in touch with, that I call, write to, speak to weekly and or reach out to.

I am by nature a drifter. I don't remain in the same place for very long or move in the same circles for very long. One moment I am there very much a part of the circle and the next I am slowly but surely increasing the distance between me and that circle, sooner or later I am no longer in it.

When I think about my drifting and once close friends that I have lost that closeness to I think of Rachel, Ilse, Alex, Jackie, Tanya, Jane, Annalea, Anna, Lizzie, Stephen, Shaloni, Marina and by no means least Dani.

Don't ask me why I drift, why I let a day become a week become a month become a year because I don't know really know but I suspect it as something do with my philosophical way of looking a friends and friendships as being dictated by need. People enter into each others lives when there is a need and they stay for as long as there is that need, when it disappears so does the contact but not the memories. Or love.

Day 08 Someone Who Made Your Life Hell, or Treated You Like Shit.

This one is beyond easy, it doesn't require a moment of hesitation or thought. The one person who leaps to mind when I ask myself 'who do I think of when I am asked to name someone who has made my life hell or treated me like shit?' my sister T.

I don't mean that in the sibling rivalry kind of way where one bullies the other or you break each others toys, read each others diaries or borrow each others things without asking. I mean that in she broke my heart and really hurt me kind of way.

She hurt me, she made me cry, she took her love away and I had it coming, so I took it as best as I could knowing I deserved a good measure, if not all, of it.

When I look at the finer details and separate them from emotion - never an easy task - it all seems so small, so silly for us to have had such a huge falling out over something that really does seem...well trivial. It really does seem petty and ridiculous and not at all understandable or reasonable. Baring these observations in mind when I then apply my emotions to it and take them in to consideration too I feel a little sheepish and pathetic. I feel a lot like the name calling of 'drama queen' and 'over sensitive' is appropriate. Is justified.

If I take a step back in the name of finding balance and look the whole 'thing' from a neutral stance there is definitely right and wrong on both sides. Yet, despite accepting that being told that she has (recently) said that 'she wasn't fair to Natasha' doesn't make me forgive her. How she made me feel still hurts too much for me to even consider it. I am using my anger - it much the same way as I use humour - as a way to avoid dealing with something I find incredibly difficult. Knowing T has voiced her guilt, may be even her remorse, doesn't change my reaction.

I can accept my role and take responsibility for what I did to deserve her wrath but I can not heal myself nor even take comfort in knowing it is in my past.

I guess it is still too raw for me to have learned anything from it and be the wiser for it.