If it is not broken

[Spideysenses]

We could bury the elephant
The rain would still pour
The wind never ceases
As the world turned
Our defences would erode
And the bones fossilised with amber
Glowing bright encased
For the founders to show.
I had to light the remains
Ablaze reduced to cinders
And the particles scatter
The earth to ecosystems entwined.
While the captors marked the grave,
Its shadow would return.

[Spideysenses]

“It’s a troublesome world. All the people who are in it are troubled with troubles almost every minute. You ought to be thankful, a whole heaping lot, for the places and people you’re lucky you’re not" - Dr Suess

[Spideysenses]

*gross exaggeration. Ammend: False threat. Straw clutching. A few months tops, of less alcohol, until someone else came on the scene as everybody caved into him. My purpose in life was not to be someone's emotional punchbag and then be discarded at their whim. Before. After.

[Spideysenses]

I was not getting hitched under someone else's god to a bigot.

[Spideysenses]

If you have the chance to be exposed to a loving, understanding environment where the seed of compassion, loving kindness, can be watered every day, then you become a more loving person
- Thich Nhat Hanh

[Spideysenses]

Everyone needs a job, a role or a purpose. But I really really needed my job. With an absent biological father and a mum who did not want me to do well in life and hated my father so much, she told anyone who would listen that "something wrong" came from his side. My own family set out to ruin me. I needed my job. My selfish stepdad wanted me to leave at sixteen. He was young when my mum fell pregnant with my younger sibling and he was visibly angry at being "trapped" by the responsibility. The loon. I have one kid. The other isna my blood.

There was no room at the Inn for me when they bought the ex-social house. It is not your room. We pay for it. It belongs to us. I paid rent to my parents for a box room when I got a steady potentially permanent job. I paid for the sport I had invested my sweat blood and tears in. My teachers told pillar that I dropped out because I was lazy. Covering up their own incompetence. So pillar told my then-manager whom he was friendly, that I was lazy. So I often got the blame for stoner the tank engine cutting corners and not stacking the empty crates at the bottom out front.

This was my life. One hit after another and another, not getting a break from anyone. I knew I was a writer. It was not a fool's errand or a childish dream. I got far in sport and it was not my strong suit. My brain was. I dropped out because I was placed in the wrong classes, did not get my subject choices, was not encouraged with art, and was picked on by teachers in primary and secondary, and I knew what I wanted to be. Pillar started to pick on me. He would say I was talented to people. Just like my parents.
They made my life hell and covered it up with duplicitous lies. To people's faces, I was described as "very intelligent." It was a starkly different story behind closed doors. I needed my job. I was called a hard worker as other managers noticed. I could easily have been a manager. I could have moved and been a manager somewhere else. I always had the brains, sense, right work ethic and potential to work in other industries including medicine. But I had hardly had a good start in life, had I?

I knew my talents belonged elsewhere. That I had to be brave. Staying was not giving in to fate although it felt like it to begin with. I had time to think and realised that running might not work for me. It may, to begin with. Eventually, I would meet someone and I am not the type of person who would have hidden something as momentous as the hospital stay. I thought that a book on why it happened would solve this quandary. Nowhere to hide. A memoir is too easy. I do not take the easy way out. I am not to blame. I always did the best I could with what was available to me at the time and I can rest knowing this.

[Spideysenses]

My mental health was not destroyed indefinitely. My self-worth and self-esteem were depleted but these can be regained and restored. He may attempt to argue that it was my family, the ward stigma, beans and pillar who were the destroyers. That he tried to "rescue" or "save" me. From what? He drank more than me. I worked more hours than him and exercised more. I did everything in the house. He fed into the stigma I was already facing and threatened to put me in the hospital to prevent me from leaving him. In his eyes, women are commodities to be traded by his terms. I would leave when he wanted me to. When?

He wanted control. Nothing more. Nothing less. He set out to bring me down and did not realise that I was willing to keep going until my fortunes turned. It was his view of women that was grossly skewed. Why did he want me to stay as a shadow of my former self? It was cruel and sadistic to use the games and abuse. Dirty fighter.
The conflict was not between what was right and wrong. The options he was weighing out were between what he wanted to do and what he could get away with. I was not going to pretend I was blind to this.

[Spideysenses]

From what? The past? Talking before a person is ready can be counterproductive. I always found peaceful creative outlets. I would not be a writer without my past or my brain. Lose something to gain something else. An alchemist's rule of law. I have paid the toll so don't tell me I don't deserve to take back the life I should have had and have been feeling bereft of for sixteen years now.

[Spideysenses]

Beans alone was enough to warrant a rehab stay. Or pillars attempt to blacken my name by itself was enough to push me to an edge. Who would blame me if I said to the doctor: where shall I start? Who do you wish for me to oust first? (I did not do or say this then or ever will)

[Spideysenses]

They moved. -All of them up there end up "dead" or as good as dead.
Was it a gulf of knowledge? A mistake set off by ignorance with arrogance? A misguided powertrip? Were they abusing their professional position? Was there a darker personal motive at play? I know people. I know how people disguise their motives. They cast the first stone with my parents. What type of family friend calls their friend's daughter or son a hopelessly lost cause to their face without the facts?
Pillar was in a whole other league of his own. He abused his perceived standing to the limits. Why was I targeted all the time? Because I actually could have been a high flyer? Just because I could have escaped to sunnier climes? I still can. Write because of them and not about them.

[Spideysenses]

- .......told me you are only working.... at the......right now. - Why did he stress the only? I took an overdose only weeks before because jam on bread tinkies sandwiches, came home attacking me every night. I was jogging and writing and reading literature and doing housework every morning and was due to start college. I wish I could say: I was doing MY work. I am reticent and cautious after the month's stay.
Jam on bread half cut asks: whit is wrong wi yur face? Looks like yuv swallowed a wasp.
Me: why did you have to tell your boss every last detail when you do not talk to me? This is what my boss does to force people out of the door. Did I ask for it? No. We have to talk about this. [I am feeling humiliated at being painted as weak and feeble]

Later on in the night, I go up to the dancefloor when I am invited. Jam on bread keeps trying to kiss me at the table and I tactfully get him to stop. Ok enough. Not here. I think you should slow down (drinking). I am convinced to wait for the taxi some other couples have booked. Jam on bread is itching to fight with someone. He has black-affronted me and himself on his own accord off his own back no one else to blame so he is bottling up his rage ready to blow. Who is he going to start on? I cannot stop him when his mind is made up.
He goes to the bar. When I go to the restroom he has followed and before I reach my destination, he pushes me at the wall in view of others and yells:
"##### and ####. I wint abiddy to kane I bide wi this b#### and ####. " He does it over and over. Like the time he screamed at the football game and his friend more or less warned him not to come back to his local again for showing him up so badly and I did not blame him. I could feel my cheeks burning that time. While he balled and rolled the r's, drunk and disorderly.
Then he disappears. I feel exposed with nowhere to go. Forced to find a way to go home again because of him. This is not the first time he has done this with an audience. I hate feeling this powerless and trapped. I took the overdose because I felt trapped. Pillar did similar thing's to me. History keeps on repeating. He would wait for an audience like a child trying to show off. If you get knocked up they won't let you in. If you cannot afford to buy shoes from me. I am sick of the elitist rhetoric. Those who never had it. I have a brain and if my life, society and country won't let me use it, I will have to be a writer. Look out with the UK for a publisher. Or simply self-publish. Light the Kandle.
All I did was go up to dance. I would have shaken off his boss's delivered comment. I was not going to reveal that I was writing and had taken an overdose? I knew I was a writer and it was going to take years of toil and sacrifice.
But I would do it. I was strong and not weak.

It hurt more because I should have been in a job with training. I tried for better jobs. But the competition was fierce without Ward thirteen hanging over my head. There are not enough jobs. There are not enough skilled jobs for able women or men.
We find him punching whiskey barrels outside. And I do not know where to look. I do not approach to stop him and no one else dares. I have to deal with this once I get home. I am frightened to death. I bite my inner cheek to stop the tears from coming. I do not get used to this.
To add insult to injury his boss cancels the party the following year and I do not think there were bonuses that year either. I should have just said "nothing" when he "enquired" about my miserable means to an end.
I should have known that Jam on bread kicks off with alcohol. It is like caring for a terrible two's toddler. Constant. Unpredictable. Let him rage until he stops. He might bite, nip, scream and pull your hair but he will die down. If you keep soothing them. Until the next episode. Let him get his motorbike. No, he will crash. He is insane enough with the cruise control in the car. He is unhinged. But no one gives a rat because I was in Ward Thirteen. How could I ever forget? Have to take the good with the bad at the best of times. Swings and roundabouts. More women die a week in the UK at the hands of a domestic partner than people who die from knife crime. Will there be a day that my life is free of violence? I don't care about any job title. I just want a peaceful home. I won't spill blood as others have done with me. I will write the truth. "Just you mind far you came from" nods. I am from the same side of the tracks as you! Why did we not have kids? I was twenty-one. We bought a house. We were not married. He still acted like a child himself. I WAS sick as a dog when I left him. In bits.

[Spideysenses]

You will never be a writer. You are just a square peg in a round hole. You? The next person who starts a sentence with you or the likes of you , and aims it at me will get a piece of my mind. And they did. Every time. It works. Your name sounds cool. That is acceptable. You will talk to him. Yes but not in the way that you believe. Believe I will make them back off. My life matters. My emotions are valid. I have the right to leave the past in the past if I choose to do so. I could only do that once the elephant was brought down. When it is, open up old wounds at your own discretion. I will act in haste.

[Spideysenses]

Whilst in hospital, where I may have taken my own life if I had not been lucky, Pillar tells Jam on bread to leave me. The reason I could siphon from Jam no butter was that Pillar told him he could do better than me and could he handle "what people would say" about people who had been "in there."
Pillar was known to have a roving eye for teenage girls. He was in a relationship with a young woman whom he had groomed when she was still at school. He was barred from teaching recreational sports at the school when the relationship came to light. He could have been making hay while the daily sun shined if a journalist had discovered it considering another, had been sensationalised for leaving their wife for a seventeen-year-old. He was in a relationship with this girl when she was fifteen. It coincides with the date he had to cease teaching at her school. He spoke about young girls looking "so grown up and stunning" at the ages of fourteen and fifteen. Being young in my situation with my parents, it is something you incredulously tell your friends. Jam on breads friends knew this and so did he. They told him to beat it, and stop showing up when he slept with one of their ex-girlfriends but the real reason was for what he really was. They did not want to be associated with him or what he stood for once they saw that his reputation was not just that of a philandering sports coach but truly a more sinister predator. Jam on breads circle was aware that small-town gossip can get distorted. For Pillar, his reputation was accurate and they learned the hard way. I had to break away from Pillar.

I was in the hospital because I had suffered a lifetime of abuse. Everyone has their breaking point.
I wished I had never taken up the sport. I never expected in my wildest nightmares to be a victim to a sociopathic liar and a borderline ex. They do not ever let you go until they are done with you. Broken is not good enough.
I am grateful that a meltdown ensured that I could break away from Pillar. Yes, I was desperate to cut the tie. I knew he was dangerous. I did not know the extent of his pathology and the depths he'd plunge to. Keeping him away from other people in my family has not been as easy. Lighting the kandle will be another step in breaking away.
They - sociopaths and some borderlines - do not let you go unless you find a way to fight back in a way they cannot. Here is where writing becomes a fight song. You have to win or they do. I did not leave, I escaped. I had to give up hope of a run-of-the-mill career to answer a true calling. Still, I am not free of what has been done to me in the past.

[Spideysenses]

Pillar: "I would arrange for someone to give her a good ####ing and seeing to."
Would I publish to keep him away from my nearest and dearest?

[Spideysenses]

I had to write in order to survive. Now I have to write in order to live.

[Spideysenses]

...mental health continues to plague our society on multiple levels. Experts advise that mental ill-health has little to do with genetic predisposition but rather is to do with adverse social circumstances including discrimination and hardship
- article in Happiful magazine

[Spideysenses]

Rest up and move on with life and do not look back. That was not an option for me. A person does not need to have extensive knowledge of mental health to know that if a person has been in hospital they need time to rest, heal and recover. My family did not provide that privilege. It was not only through ignorance or being busy with work. My ol'dears job at that point was only twenty hours a week. She never wanted to work full-time.
They did not want me to recover in case I spoke about my home life.
I never intended to remain silent or suffer in silence. So they piled on the pressure. I will talk to someone only when ready. That was my realisation. Move on and land a meaningful occupation in my hometown. Not possible. Instead of going to college and then art school or moving to begin afresh, I decided that I had to wait and see if the dust would settle and turn my creative intuitions all into writing and not art. Running was not going to work. Move and meet someone. When do I tell them about Thirteen?
I knew things would never be the same after siwang but was I happy with the way my life was before the meltdown anyway? I was just finding my feet and then one month. I wanted and needed things to change. I had to break away from people in my past but I could stay in this beautiful part of the world.
I had time to think and I did not want to go back to having to psych myself up and forcing myself to talk louder and appear like an outgoing people pleaser. Sometimes wearing a mask was essential to protect me. There was no need to feel guilty. I had been handed a fight I never wanted or went looking for. But I had it and there was no easy way out. I do not resent it. I would rise to the challenge as the alternative routes would not end well. I sensed. The alternative was simply not an option for me.

I was going to work to my introvert's strengths and talents. Without the time to think and meltdown, I may not have come to this conclusion. I'd have changed to fit those around me. Can't beat em join em. No not anymore. I was going to dig my heels in and leap into the breach. Be the old me and prove that everyone was wrong to try and force me to change who I was and make me feel that being me was not good enough. Be more like this person. Live life like that person. Or do you want to be stuck on the bench?
I had already been put on the shelf and know that people would gladly have tossed me -wrongly and unfairly, with evil intent- onto the scrap heap. So to say I was passed the stage of worrying about taking a break from the status quo. There is more to life than blasted pubs.

[Spideysenses]

I did not need to be told I had lost the battle. I was the one in the thick of it. To win the war I had to lose the battle. That was glaringly obvious. Oblivious. You are just a good quine who had every right to be disgusted that the employees who smoked got extra breaks. Being static and standing in one place was not only bad for back health but not changing around jobs was cumbersome, tedious, monotonous and harmful mentally to mood and morale. I had to weigh up my options from my esoteric knowledge. I needed to challenge my brain but a baHons at college was not appealing as it was a lottery with lecturers. I would not have a job I was capable of in my area because of Thirteen. So committing to years where I lived was disheartening. There was no appeal to being spoonfed for years when I had found the creative sparks and knew what it took to create something unique. I was better off doing this alone and that realisation took strength and not cowardice. My heart was not in aiming for art school when I only drew to cover the gap where I struggled to write due to my home life, abysmal mentors and unsupportive teachers besides one or two exceptions. Clinging onto the good and positive when I am only one person was only getting me so far. Looks like I have to stay tough until I make it. Do not fake it. Toughen up enough. Comfort has to wait.

The only technical/engineering jobs I had heard of women landing back as a teen were Telecom Engineers. These companies employ tens of thousands of employees. But I knew how young men who were not brash and outgoing were treated by some local tradesmen. Would larger companies be different? I knew they might since there would be an official complaints procedure for one. And a more progressive and established structure and training programmes for two. It would not be like working for the cowboy my sibling had for too many years.
But after thirteen I did not need a spotlight on me. Not yet at least. I and Odd would have split in no time. His bit of stuff with work that did not fit his vision of what a woman should be doing? He would have torn into me. Even though it was ignorant and childish it is said to hurt.
They only took you on because big companies have gender and race equality targets and ither "p!s#". It is ah fur show. Wimmen canna iver dae fit men can.
Noo you can wear troosers to work and nae a skirt being a trolley dolly shelf monkey. Whit you ayways winted ay?
It is not a "real" engineering job. Jist a title. A bloated oot title.
That is why they tack on woo-men like you who believe in the (insert derogatory homophobic slur) feminist s#!t£.
Sure you werena a man in yur past life?
Wear a mask the next time you try and rob me ...
On the sivinth day, God created man first. Mind at.
Resent me cause yur jealous... I am nae a glake or a gleeb....my femly gie a frig aboot me...unlike your....
It is you who canna afford jack all.....wi yur job my feel aunt could dae.....kane hoo lucky....a woman could nivir dae my job...and the one I bide wi...delusional....boy at work....ither boy at work...

God in heaven. Gobsmacked silence. Honestly, is he for real? Some remarks deserve silence and waiting until they hang their head in shame. Save face.
I would rather be a woman who takes responsibility for their words, actions and choices. I will never know what people go through with body dysphoria. The process they must go through mentally. I know what it is like to have anxiety over my appearance and figure. Acutely so as a teen. I never escaped unscathed. Except I am thankful that social media was only in its infancy when I was in my late teens.
To past life - In future keep your fascist homophobic comments to yourself. What if someone falls in with the wrong crowd?

[Spideysenses]

Gender matters. Your view on gender-based issues matters. Your stance and opinion on biological sex and gender are important. Preventing violence against women matters.

[Spideysenses]

True contentment comes from within
True reward comes from within

[Spideysenses]

Did pull your socks up suggest that I was smoking weed as well as the pothead I worked with? I had not stacked the crates wrong. I did it a handful of times when I had to help a member of the public out or I was called over tannoy. It was when I first started and did not want to leave anyone waiting.
Nestle had already made childish remarks about me having "droopy eyelids." My pet hate is when someone accuses me of having smoked weed because I have slightly heavy eyelids. Even in jest, I find it rude. I was training at a high level at the time and have never once been stoned. I would voice no objection to people who use cannabidiol for medical reasons. But pot and stronger versions/strains like skunk make mincemeat of some people's brains. I have no vendetta against weed. If someone prefers to chill that way then that is their prerogative and I know they know the dangers vs the desired sought effects. I do not believe that drugs aid creativity. The young me always thought along the lines of A bottle of beer is always a bottle of beer nothing else. I would rather put my young liver and body under a little pressure than risk permanent damage to my brain. My brain was all I had growing up.

[Spideysenses]

There is no way to happiness
Happiness is the way
-Thich Nhat Hanh

[Spideysenses]

He has recruits to teach for free.
So I see. He tried to get my dad to paint the gym for nothing, Claiming the paintwork looked "slimy."
He has a nerve calling anyone smarmy.
Tell me about it. Fitba told me that he gets people to do
Thing's for free all the time. Gets them
To do the job and then refuses to pay at the end,
Saying he will give them free classes instead.
What adult wants or has time to do Karate?
And what an arrogant oaf for offering
Classes from himself as payment.
More to the point there is a word
Reserved especially for him: Mooch.

[Spideysenses]

Needs a good....f##king sympathiser. Mooch and mooch alike.

[Spideysenses]

Can't be long now. Keep fire in the belly. Write. The path to truth is long when you were fed lies for years and years. I think the only truth my blood father told me was why he was discharged. His leg was shattered in a football match. If I were informed it was a bad-blood lie, I would not dwell on it. Serenity what I cannot change. Lie: My Grandfather left the Navy to start a family. Truth: My Grandfather had a family before marrying my Gran and had a meltdown before he left the Navy.
The only truth Odd ever gave for his anger and violence was that he was never good at anything (sport) and had to wear hand-me-downs. People often go one of two ways. One: They become selfish and greedy. Two: they want a rewarding occupation or life once they see that money is not worth what it brings with it - trouble, woe and strife with friends and family. That there will always be someone who will sacrifice their health (or sell their soul) and time on this earth for what? Are some jobs worth it?
I am committed to my craft. But throwing others off a bridge? I omitted the other route. One that leads to an early coffin. Not me. Never. Highest deaths in Europe. Incredibly sad. People have two drives if you like your psychology science. The life drive Eros or the death drive Thanatos. Time is money would come under a death drive if you ask me - profit over people. If I had fulfilled my educational potential in a stable family in a parallel life, I would have been an environmental lawyer.
Since my writing saved me at twenty-three there was no looking back. Get the people who landed me in the lurch out of my system and pursue my real calling. A domestic abuse novel should be water off a ducks back for me - family and abusive ex. The cycle. Except there is more pressure and expectation to be pinpoint and accurate. The title should be - Mob mentality: How to get away with murder in a small town. When community spirit is toppled by community mobbing. Am I the descender?

[Spideysenses]

Be the kindlest version of yourself

[Spideysenses]

I would never advise someone to or not to take the writer's journey. I would warn that it is not for the faint-hearted. What made you think that you were the judge, jury and executioner? He never was so he can think what he wishes. Have I ever known comfort anyway?

[Seagull]

Stakker Humanoid

[Spideysenses]

I can apportion a lot of the blame on my blood father. A night shift in a supermarket pays well. Not to be scoffed at. I would rather have studied from home while working in a supermarket once I took a year out to re-evaluate. I could have worked up like Nestle said if my teachers had not taken the blame off of themselves for not putting me in the right classes and then offloading to pillar of all people. I am sure he had more faith in me than the stoner. But my life was uprooted the minute the snarling wolf turned up on the doorstep. And mud sticks. My teachers told Mooch that I was lazy for leaving. So Mooch told Nestle. Domino one. My teachers or Mooch, who threw the first stones? Both.

[Spideysenses]

Jeremey Kyle cut to the chase on daytime tv. His most famous catchphrase was: why did you not put something on the end of it then? I did not like the bear bating no-holds-barred style. Entertainment that relied heavily on the humiliation and degradation of people who had been marginalised in society.
Leave a girl in the lurch and you carry on like you are Erchie? Living the life of Riley after what you did to this poor girl? Think you are a big shot lad? Think you are hard? You are a mug. We all know a Dad who gives the father-son talk. You get her pregnant it is your son or daughter too. You ruin a quines life, it will come back and bite you on your #^## boy mark my words. You run, you are a spineless coward.
I am not suggesting that Jeremy Kyle was a secret feminist (although it could be plausible to suggest so). He is on a towards the right-wing news channel now. I am clearly left-leaning. I could hardly get away from someone having it on when it was on repeat every day on Freeview and you work with oldies. Was not sad to see it end.