I will not let her win

Three years ago I was suffering from a mild depression and a serious case of anxiety following the very messy end of a relationship.

At the time I was fighting my way out of it I wrote this poem, and I like to read it when times are tough to remember just how strong I really am :)

I see her

Peering out through a veil of tears

Ice cold depths of blue

I hear her

Hear the whisper of her voice

The same as mine yet somehow different

I feel her

Every emotion churning through her body

Riding the tidal wave of another onslaught

I look at her

She is me yet somehow not me

Existing in some alternate universe

She stares back at me

Trying to read

The message in my eyes

She speaks back to me

Her voice a tremor on the wind

Barely catching the softest breeze

She puts her arms around me

Riding every rhythm of my syncopated heart

Trying to calm the jolting waves of emotion

We are two but somehow one

Teetering on the edge of a world I do not know

Wanting to come back to the world I do

I need to be free of her

I will not let her stay in control

I will not let her win.

It's life but not as we expected it to be

Its funny isn't it, how life rarely turns out how we planned it to be.

In 11 days time I'm going to be 39 years old. Yep 39, 1 year off my 30-10th birthday :)

Am I freaked about 40 next year?

No actually, I'm quite OK with it. Its just a number, the only thing it really affects is the childbearing window, but even that it seems these days is constantly stretching.

But it is a time to reflect on where I currently am at with my life.

When I was 16 I made this list of what I thought I'd have and have done by 30. It seemed so far away, so much time to achieve things, and here we are, about to hit the 25 years on from that list and it barely seems like I have lived 10 years, let alone a 1/4 of a century!

That teenager thought that by now she would be married to the love of her life that she would meet around the age of 20, have a couple of kids living in suburban bliss with her lawyer husband, whilst managing an incredibly successful journalistic career.

Yearly trips to exotic overseas destinations, a large showy house in only the best suburbs, designer clothes, designer accessories, her family a model of absolute domestic perfection, an escape from the sometimes boring middle class life that existed of divorced parents, no money, holidays that the most exotic were to a caravan park called 'Blue Lagoon' and a lifelong struggle with money.

Was I seriously for real??????

Unfortunately at the time, the material things I didn't have, the stability I thought I didn't have, and being different were the drivers of what I wanted and thought I deserved to have.

Thankfully as I've gotten older I have realised how unimportant those material needs actually are and focused on the real requirements, the emotional and spiritual connections with people, the things that sustain me rather than define me.

So what have I achieved? 

Well I might not be the famous broadcast journalist I had hoped to be, but I do have a rather satisfying job in Learning and Development - and I'm good at it! Modest? Well, not usually, but in this one I can afford to be, I've had enough feedback from people I consider to be experts in the field, so I think its OK to be confident about it :)

I have my Louis Vuitton handbag. Something I'm proud of? No, not really, in fact I never use it. At the time I bought it, I was 29 and all about 'designer'. I bought him for 'what' he was, not 'who' he was, and I didn't particularly like him, he was however an LV.

Now I'm not saying I've completely changed, I still love pretty things, I adore handbags and I absolutely have champagne tastes on a beer budget, but those things don't rule my life. I love window shopping, I find it relaxing and can wander aimlessly for hours, but I'm not in a financial position to buy them, I probably never will be, so my purchases these days are either needs or if they are wants, they are saved for, truly loved for 'who' they are, and used all the time, they 'work' for their money :)

I have a wonderful extended family. My parents divorced when I was 8 years old and by the time I was 10 they had both re-married. Along with my step dad came 3 kids of his own, all of whom were at least 10 years older than me. Growing up we were just these 3 little kids that used to tag along and hang around, but now as we are all adults and they have kids of their own that are all in their 20's and teens and we are exceptionally close, and I wouldn't trade them for the world.

Love is a never ending quest

I have been lucky to be in love 3 times in my adult life.

The first was the deepest emotional connection I have ever felt to someone. It was intense, passionate, emotional. It lasted on and off for 7 years throughout my 20's. It was also illicit because he belonged to someone else.

Over the years I have asked myself many times was it all those things because we never could 'be' but I know in my heart, the same way I know about the ones that weren't that it was about him, about us.

The second followed on a few years later. He made me feel like I could do anything, accomplish anything. We were happy for a while, he loved me intensely, almost as much as he loved his alcohol.

When we first started out we conducted our romance like everyone else, romantic dates, getting to know each other, weekends spent in bed, making love, watching DVDs, but slowly the weekends spent in bed became a necessity as he dealt with a hangover, or was coming down off the 'E's' he would take to 'party' on a weekend.

I loved him, but ultimately its hard to be in love with someone whose addictions become the focal point of the relationship.

He proposed to me as I broke up with him, and when I declined asked if he hadn't of waited and asked me earlier would I have accepted. It almost broke my heart to have to tell him no. No one wants to be the one to end something that the other thinks is still good.

Number 3 was unexpected, and I did originally reject the idea as he lived in the USA, I wasn't prepared to do the long distance thing, I'd already turned down that proposition from a wonderful man a few years earlier. But a good friend of mine died unexpectedly at the age of 35, I realised life was too short to not give things a chance.

We were together for just over a year and in that time we met face to face, spent an intense 2 weeks together that ended in an engagement and a promise to be forever.

Unfortunately though things didn't end up the way we both had hoped they would. I realised that I loved him but I wasn't in love with him. We were too different, our lives, our interests, our beliefs and most importantly our values were on totally different planes and it came to an extremely messy end that resulted in me being cyber stalked for a number of months and almost having a breakdown.

What I did end up with was mild depression and a fairly decent case of anxiety, the later unfortunately of which still remains til this day.

I am lucky now, that I recognise the symptoms when a panic attack is coming on and generally can breathe through them, in fact the amount of times I've had one and the people around me have no idea is too many to count, and it takes a fair level of stress these days to trigger them!

Right now that love quest continues. I'm 2 months in to a new relationship and feel like everything about this amazing man is what I've been looking for all these years. Is he 'the one'? Its too early to tell, but its certainly looking good, everything about being with him feels right :)

We are so completely on the same wave length, share the same values, have a lot in common and a similar outlook in and of life. We have enough differences to keep it interesting and I like how he makes me feel, about myself, about him, about a future, so we'll see, he definitely has the potential
to be the greatest love of my life, its now up to God and fate to see how it plays out :)

But we have been friends for a very long time, so I think that is a very good beginning :)

The other stuff :)

Babies have not yet been a part of my equation. I currently have 5 nieces that I love unconditionally. They are little rays of light that belong in their own little space in my heart. I adore them all as if they were my own. Niece number 6, or maybe a nephew is due in December and I know I'm going to love he or she just as much, and no doubt, like with each of the others I will cry when I hold them in my arms.

Luckily for me my beautiful man right now is interested in being a Dad, so maybe if the stars align, we may just both get our wish :)

Real estate has still managed to escape me. I know they say that rental money is dead money, and I guess that is true for those that aspire to the 'Great Australian Dream' and want to own their own little pocket of suburbia.

For me, I've never been in a financial position to make that happen, and a part of that is because I am such a city girl at heart. I've lived in the inner west of Sydney for the last 13 years and I can't imagine being anywhere else, can't even remember what it was like to have to catch a bus and a train to get to work, to be more than a 20 minute train ride away, to not have the various cultural pursuits such as restaurants, cafes, pubs, theatres within easy reach.

To buy around here for a single person on only a moderate wage, or even a couple on one wage is prohibitive. For me to buy without a partner I'd need to move way out into the Western Suburbs as my family have done. Whilst it would be nice to be near them, my life is not out there, so a mortgage for the moment remains elusive and the rental market my life.

I have over the years cultivated some of the most amazing, lasting friendships. People have come and gone in my life, fulfilled their purpose and moved on. Its always sad when that happens, but as I get older, I get less caught up in the why's and could have beens, but more thankful for the time they were with me.

But one core group of friends have been around, some of them for over 20 years, the more recent additions over the last 12 or so.

Without these friends I don't know how I would have made it through the heartaches, through the loss of my beloved Nan, celebrated the wins, the good times and just generally just remained sane!

So as I approach 39 in 11 days and more importantly 40 in 376 I may not have accomplished all those things that I thought I would have when I was 16, but I've certainly lived a life with no regrets that I didn't meet those deadlines, and life that has been rich in so many other ways.