Tuesday 20 August 2013


Still got the blues for you.....

Ahhh....the bittersweet memory of young love lost.  Don’t we all have memories of that certain someone...that certain person who did something special to our hearts when we were younger...but due to circumstances....it just didn’t work.  I think often of my missed opportunity...think a lot of what might have been...how my life might have been different...those damned sliding doors. 

We were 17....we kind of always had a thing for each other...but nothing ever manifested. We were both so shy.  We had our moments...our feet used to meet and cross together under the table in the library...the night we laid talking til early in the morning at camp before being told to go back to my room by a teacher...the times we spent fixing up your car which I never actually saw out of the garage...that sweet, sweet kiss...the only kiss....we shared the last time we saw each other before you had to catch your bus home - I wish I had known then that it was the last time I was to see you.

We wrote after you moved away....then I met someone....we still wrote but then you told me how you thought he wasn’t right for me...It was wrong, you thought I deserved better.  You were the only one that tried to warn me.....the only one....I wish I had listened.  I wish I had run away and joined you...but you never asked me to.  That was the last time I heard from you....
 
Every now and again I would dream of you...ships that passed in the night.  After my marriage broke up....which you knew it would....I tried to find you.  Funny to find all the people with the same name but with different lives...almost like a super hero with so many aliases.  A landscaper in WA...someone on the board of water in QLD (there were a lot of them)....then it happened.  I found your name, a photo, a place....it was definitely you.  I knew it was....even 20 years later.  What now?? Were you in a relationship? Were you happy?  Would I be an unwelcome blast from the past?  Did you ever think about me??  Seems yes you were, yes you are, I never really found out.....the last question I will probably never know.

I wish I could go back all those years, and that I had listened to you.  I often wonder how different my life would be now if I had.  But the reality is that I didn’t...as much as I wish I could go back...I can’t.   I’d like to thank you for caring so much at the time and for being so honest.  I only wish I had been as honest with myself. The signs were there, I was just too blinded at the time to see them.   Who knows how different my life might be now.  But it still doesn’t stop me thinking every now and again....what if????

It was so long ago...but I still got the blues for you....
 
 

Sunday 18 August 2013


You can count on me like one, two, three......

Friendship can be a wonderful, fulfilling, nurturing and mutually enjoyable experience for many people.  It can also be painful, frustrating, maddening and bewildering also.  It all depends on what kind of person you are, and of course the kind of people you are friends with.  We all have those wonderful friends that you know even if you don’t see each other very often that when you do get together it is as if no time had passed.  You talk for hours, you laugh, you cry, you catch up and at the end you part after having had a wonderful time and looking forward to the next catch up.  There are no assumptions, no demands...no consequences. 

Some friends are hard work.  They require a certain amount of effort from you to keep the friendship going and sometimes after spending time with them you feel drained and exhausted.  They always manage to steer the conversation around to themselves, you have to meet on their terms, where they want and when and they walk over your emotions because it is “all about them”.  Sometimes they even make you feel guilty because you haven’t done or said what they wanted...like you have disappointed them.  But do they have any right to make you feel that way?  Friendship is a relationship that needs give and take from both people.  If the balance is not there, then no wonder you feel like this friendship is hard work.  If a friend comes to console and support you but then turns the situation around so that you are forced to be the support – how can that be mutually fulfilling? If it is always you that has to make the phone call, always you that has to organise the get-togethers, always you that has to make the effort – that’s not a friendship – it’s a Social Secretaries job.

And what happens when you are friends with someone, but another of their friends really rubs you the wrong way?  This can be a really tricky situation.  You don’t like the way they act, you don’t like the things they say and you certainly don’t like they way they treat your mutual friend.   But do you have the right to say or do anything?  They are not your friend...they are your friend’s friend.   You are friends by association so really the only option is to avoid them – without making your friend feel uncomfortable when you are both at the same function or forcing your friend to pick sides.  Why make it harder on your friend when it is not their fault?

I personally do not have a lot of friends.  I have a few close friends whom I know I can trust and if I ever need help, they wouldn’t hesitate and vice-versa. They are wonderful, strong, loyal people and I dearly love all of them.  And of course I know other people who I might catch up with for dinner or get together every now and again, but if they moved to another state tomorrow, I wouldn’t be devastated like I would if it were one of my close friends. To me these friends are the real essence of friendship and I treasure the time we spend together.  They make my life’s moments more wonderful and more bearable.  They are the Coco to my Chanel...the train to my carriage...the bacon to my eggs.  So...what kind of friend are you?
 
 

Tuesday 6 August 2013


These battle scars......

Doesn’t life have a way of throwing a curve ball when you least expect it?  Everything is going along swimmingly and then...Wham!!  Something totally out of the blue happens that knocks you for a six and then in many cases seems to continue on a roll with other catastrophes happening straight after...as if you haven’t enough to deal with – along comes more.  Not always do the curve balls happen to you directly but often to someone you know, someone you care about, someone you are close to and even though it doesn’t affect you directly, it still has an impact on you...sometimes an enormous impact.

In the past six months there have been two people whom I work with that have lost newborn babies...much wanted and loved little souls...through no fault of their own.  Every test was normal, every stage was textbook, there was no hint of the absolute devastation that was about to hit their families with a grief that they would carry for the rest of their lives...the loss of a child.  My heart went out to them, nothing you could say or do seemed enough...enough to make up for their loss.

Also recently, I learnt that a new friend has been diagnosed with lung cancer...too late, according to doctors.  I have never met Raul but have come to admire and respect him in the past few months.  A lovely, sincere person who doesn’t deserve the hand he has been dealt.  So how, in this day and age, with medical knowledge as it is, can situations like these just seem to slip past unnoticed??  Are medical services stretched too far?  Are waiting lists and hospital bed turnovers putting too much pressure on the system so that warning signs get missed?  Are doctors too busy/too tired/too blasé?  None of these are very comforting for the people who they affect the most...the patients and families. 

So how DO you cope when told that it is only a matter of hours before your newborn baby slips away....or that you have a terminal illness and you only have months to live?  For the parents who grieve not only the loss of a child, but the loss of that life not lived...the possibilities that could have been...a life to grow and share.  For a person with a terminal illness, a part of life has been lived, a life has grown and shared and in retrospect, there is some precious time left - time to sort affairs, time to fulfil final wishes, time to say goodbyes.  Time still left to love and share. A small blessing under the circumstances.  Both situations take enormous strength and courage - the strength to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and the courage to face life and continue on.

So sometimes these curve balls come from nowhere, and affect you when you least expect it.  They leave scars on your psyche and your soul. The scars never go away.  Sometimes you may think about them and pick at them til they are raw and bleed and the pain returns.  Then they scab over.... and life goes on....the same, but yet different.  If only life came complete with a catcher’s mitt.