.: Entry One-Hundred and Five :.

My name is Elliot Parker, and the story of that two hours of my life is still not finished.

So, there we were, in the kitchen. I said the new floor looked good, turned out he had laid it himself. Credit where credit is due, it looked better than the last load of lino. So I asked what else was different. The old living room, the one I had painted was all new with a carpet and everything I had put in there was gone. That was the first clue.

He asked me if I saw her on Sundays, the day he wasn’t about. I said no, I work Sundays. He said he thinks she’s been having an affair. I shrugged. Not my business, but I don’t see her Sundays. I said I was only there because things were tense when she came over earlier. He said she had told him she was off out at a breakfast with her mates. I shrugged again. I told him where she was, I explained it was the only day I could make. She had been hounding to spend time with me and that was the only day I was willing to give her. She had told him she goes to visit her mother and she can’t help it if I am there, she wasn’t happy about it. I wondered how much more ridiculousness we were enduring.

I asked to go to see my room. He told me there wasn’t much there. He was right, the units I had brought, built and installed in my room a few months before I left were gone, thrown in a skip apparently. My bed was gone. What little of my stuff remained was likely to be in the bin bags stacked in the corner of the room. The little she hadn’t thrown away was in bin bags. The last of my life was there, crumpled up in a heap in the corner of the room. That’s when it hit me, how little she cared for my existence, it made me in that moment question if she ever did. I wouldn’t have the questioning lingering much longer though.

We went back downstairs and talked some more. Some of it was catching up, some of it was dispelling Madam’s myths. This was beginning to get ridiculous. I asked him if he had a job, he said no, she had been telling him not to that she was insisting he didn’t get a job, didn’t apply and didn’t interview. And I believed him, she did the exact same thing to me all the time, she hated when I did get a job in that hell of a school. Surprising, considering how badly she was desperate to kick me out again. I told her that she was making it seem like he was scrounging money off her and putting her into debt, she was always making it seem like she had no money at all. She had been taking money from my nana. He was surprised. I explained to him that I wasn’t blackmailing her at all, fact of the matter was when he left for prison she made me move back in and I managed to get rid of some of her debts for her. She made me delete all my social medias at the time so that him and his family couldn’t find me (telling me he was threatening me, but telling him and his family that I died) for that she gave me a little bit of money in her words as a present to make up for it.

The more we spoke the more we found out, I wanted to take the little of my stuff and leave. We were discussing if we going to confront her with it or walk away when the choice was taken from us. The key was in the door and she was walking in. So we sat in the other room and waited in silence waiting for her to walk in. We sat there as she walked in the room and waited for her to speak, she stood there staring at us sat as physically as far apart on opposite ends of the room, sure it was a civilised conversation, but I am certain neither of us felt safe at all. In any way shape or form. She didn’t speak. So I did, “I thought I’d stop by for a chat and to see JJ, but apparently he’s not been here for months.” She stood there for a minute realising her lies were exposed. She just said “Oh, yeah.”

Rather than speaking to her directly I asked if I could borrow some bags so I could take my things from the bin bags upstairs. Her *vomits in mouth* husband got up and took some carrier bags out of the cupboard under the stairs. I took the bags and I went upstairs and began to undo the top bag. I got into it and leafed through trying to find what I hadn’t wanted to be parted from. I found some of the family photos cramped into the bottom of one and took it out and began putting things into bags sorting through the stuff. It was stressful and it hurt me to do it. To have to work out what was salvageable and what I had to give up on. I had to give up on a lot. Luckily the things I wanted most I could rescue, just about, however bent and squashed they were I could take them. And I had no intention of leaving the things behind. Even though this was less than a quarter of what I had in my room when I had to leave. Whether it was the dust or how I felt about it making it hard to breathe I couldn’t tell. I guess that’s when that elephant of emotions found its homing beacon. It was painful and I wanted to break down and cry but now was not the time, I wasn’t in a safe place. Not yet.

.: Entry One-Hundred and Four :.

My name is Elliot Parker. If I am a deliberate creator, why do I feel so out of control right now?

Two weeks ago I decided to surprise my mother. I decided to just stop by her house, yup I said her house. She kicked me out two years ago and put block after block on me visiting her. But I was in the area and I decided to take a little control and stop by and have a chat. That is how the truth came out. She wasn’t home, but the man she had kicked me out for was. The one I didn’t approve of, never had never will. She kicked me out because he was out of prison and she wanted him back in the house.

She had spent months saying they broke up and he was moving out but dragging his heels taking his stuff slowly. So confronted by the site of him opening the door and telling me she wasn’t in I decided now was the best chance I had of knowing the truth.

I asked him if he lived there, he said yes. I asked him if they were still together, he said yes. I asked him how together was together, he pulled his hand out of his pocket and showed me his wedding ring. I asked how long, three years- when he was still in prison. She had lied. Repeatedly. All those times I had asked her about the ring and all she said was it made him feel better about being inside, she denied being married to him, time and again. She had lied again. I didn’t even feel surprised. I don’t think she has ever told me the damn truth. Like an idiot I stood there. Like an idiot I said “so you’re not moving out?”, no was his response. That’s when he invited me in, then I remembered one of what I was about to find out one of her many lies. So I asked him if he was trying to do some kind of harm to me because I didn’t help with his court case he said no, he had no use of me. Another one of her looming dangerous threats and lies disappeared. So I stepped through the door of my old home.

I asked if my dog was about, I couldn’t hear him behind the living room door. He said no. He said my mother had rehomed him months ago. Without my consent. That was it, my baby was gone, the only thing that she could have manipulated and forced me to get back into that house was gone. And it broke my heart, not that she no longer had something to hold over me. But like yet another lie that she had been forcing down my throat telling me, my baby wasn’t really there. My baby was gone, there was no way I could find him or bring him back. There is no way I could bring my JJ home. There was no way I could hug him again, there was no way I could have had the chance to say good bye. He was gone. I was told that Madam as I call my mother, had rehomed him months ago to a farm. I’m not a five-year-old anymore, when people say they rehomed a dog or a pet to a farm it normally translates to the pet was put down. That is when the first seeds of hatred really sprouted up and started to really grow.

I went into the living room, the TV was on and working and it wasn’t at all broken. Unlike what madam had been telling, she had said my boy had thrown a tennis ball into the TV screen and broke it. Trying to get a new TV out of it. Well, that didn’t surprise me, I even asked her *Swallows the bile* husband about the TV if it had ever been broken. He said no. By now disbelief and surprise were impossible. That is when he said something, he had been wanting to contact me recently. That had my interest, he wanted to send me a message to say that he realised now that I hadn’t been blackmailing my mother and that he should never harassed and threatened me by text. I said it would have been impossible for him to message me, I refused to give my mother my new number since I changed it after his messages. I wasn’t surprised that she said I was blackmailing her, because of those messages that when I asked her about it she said it was because he was all up in her face and she had to say something, anything for him to back off. What frustrated me was that she was still trying to sell those lies, even now. Those same old falsehoods. And I was always the villain, no matter what, even when it was entirely her behaviour, her choice, her fault it was always still all blamed on me. I must have seemed pathetic, I felt it right then, another one of her lies, all at her own convenience. Always saving her own damn skin. Always so she can be the victim, so she can garner sympathy, be at the centre of attention, so she can’t be blamed, so she isn’t responsible for her actions. It always had to be my fault. The scapegoat.

I suppose I must have been deer in the headlight a little, I suppose he was too. He even offered me a cup of tea. The man she had told me was threatening me, wanted me dead, was holding a civilised conversation with me and even offered me a cup of tea in the house that I grew up in. I refused, too many bad memories and to be honest, I still didn’t feel safe. I suspect I haven’t felt safe in that house, not really, not once. I was always under some kind of fire.

 

.: Entry One-Hundred and Three :.

My name is Elliot Parker. Grief is a terrible thing. Right now I feel like I am grieving so much. I haven’t been here for so long. Not physically and definitely not mentally. Coming back here. It is different. It feels harder than it ever has. But then again, how is anything meant to feel the same.

I feel like I am on the verge of a storm of tears all the goddamn time. I feel like I am drowning. I’ve been playing for so long, pretending I had control. Trying to convince myself I could be in control of my life and how I feel and what would happen.

I was wrong.

If I deliberately created this, it seems all I created was freedom and the grief freedom brings.

It is time I told the truth, to myself.

I spent my life being controlled and manipulated. It has taken having a normal, healthy, happy relationship for me to see everything differently. From the reality of life rather than the screwed up tinted frame of what someone else wanted me to see.

I’ve seen the truth for all it is in every instance. I grew up with an emotionally abusive mother.

It has taken years in cognitive behavioural therapy to finally find words and names of it and I finally feel ready to acknowledge it for what it is. Because right now, how I feel is in free fall. I haven’t slept through the night in weeks. I wake up every few hours. Normally I am a full sleeper and I am grumpy as hell if I don’t sleep. Well without real rest for weeks now I feel like an emotional volcano waiting to explode. And I do. Every night when I lay in bed and there is nothing at all to distract myself with. No matter how exhausted I am I can’t fall asleep. All I can do is cry. I spend the days keeping it in. But at night, there is nothing to stop the floods. Every morning I wake up with that horrid hangover you get from crying your soul out.

You see, recently I found out the truth that I had needed to know. I found that the last tethers I had, the last shreds of rope that I had been tied down with were destroyed.

Sounds stupid right? How could I be tied down and not know it? How could I not know all that I do now? I suppose I sort of, subconsciously did, but I got to find out the whole lot, the whole truth, everything I needed to know from someone who didn’t have the agenda to lie to me. What hold she had to manipulate me with, what she was holding over me was gone. I was free. I am free.

The truth hurts, but I feel better for it. I was fed up to death with all the lies. Lies from the moment I was born it felt like.

So what is it like being free from that chaos and manipulation? It feels foreign. It feels weird. Like a new kind of grief. Like so many kinds of grief, I feel like I am grieving over so many things at once it’s a struggle to know where to start. It’s a struggle some times to know why I feel so emotional.

Some nights I just feel the foundations crumbling apart. I feel chunks of who I am falling away now that I am free from the torment I am struggling to find out who the hell I really am. There is only one consistency. One reassurance in the mist of this shitstorm, Dyl. I break down more, and I hate that I can’t help doing it in front of him. I just feel so on edge all the time. I just feel like I am trying to accomplish too much. I am trying to be too strong. I am trying so hard to get my shit together and stop falling apart when that is all I want to do.

Yes, I have suffered with depression before, but this feels different. It feels like that dark cloud is trying to get a grip to take hold and destroy me again but I keep fighting it all the time. I am so tired of fighting but I know I can’t let myself stop. I can’t stop fighting or I will never survive. I want to survive. I can’t let myself be swallowed up in the pain like I was before. I can’t let the unravelling of everything be the thing that kills me. I can’t let finally being free destroy me. I can’t let my liberation be the thing that messes up all the progress I made. I will not go back. I will not let myself fall further down the rabbit hole. I will not stop fighting. Not this time. It was so hard rebuilding the last time it took over. This time I will weather the storm. I will survive this storm and I will thrive. I have to. I have too much to live for.

I just have to find a way to slowly break down how I am feeling. I have to work it all out. But I think to do that, I think I need to explain how the ropes were broken. I need to tell the most unbelievable truth, but it’s the truth, it is my truth. It is my reality. It is what has been pulling me apart from the inside out. It is time I let myself just be free, whatever that is, it is such a heavy feeling. I thought being free was meant to feel lighter, like a weight lifted, instead the weight of the grief that has come with it has been like an elephant sat on my chest. No matter how hard I try to take care of myself, I can’t get that elephant to leave me alone.

.: Entry One-Hundred and Two :.

My name is Elliot Parker. I did something I haven’t done in such a long time. I read a book, actually I read more than one. Four to be exact. In just over a week. I couldn’t stop. I was obsessed. Not a self-help book. Not a meditation book. Just a book. There’s something about opening a book and letting it transform you in a way and boy do I feel different. I feel, so much more the badass than I remember feeling for a long time. This was something independent on realities influence.

At work, lots of people come and go, someone surprised me though. I had been walking around and a man, elderly. With grey hair and dark tan skin and a smile called to me. I had been thinking about getting home reading more of that book and the man, he said “hello your majesty” to get my attention. I was surprised. Utterly. He smiled and was lovely and polite and asked a couple of questions and told me a little of his family before I had to go and help someone. I didn’t see him leave, but he had truly surprised me. Being called “your majesty” was strange. I don’t know, I kinda liked it. I suppose. I think it was funny in a way, a way to see deliberate creation at work, instantaneous, resistant free. The book I had been reading was about a queen. A badass one at that.

In reality, I know I am no queen. But there is a problem with that, I have to correct that, because in some ways I am. In the spirit dreams, I am. Even though I haven’t had any in ages, I know regardless of what dream I enter, there is a degree of something unwritten. In my dreams I am the one thing I have never associated myself with being, I can’t imagine my waking days as being royalty. It feels like a much too precious a thing. But when it comes to dreams that is different.

There was something else in those books that unleashed something. Not a badass queen. No this was different.

I hadn’t thought about it before, the type of kisses that there are, the way a kiss can feel.

I can’t remember what the last one with Adrian was like. I can’t work it out. I can’t imagine it, not that I want to.

But I can remember the last one I had when Dyl dropped me home Saturday. It was freezing and we were tired. It was starting to rain. Where I live creates this wind tunnel kind of effect, which makes my hair whirl and whip and it becomes a total mess. He kissed me softly, like one of those well practiced, well executed goodbye kisses. In that moment that wasn’t enough. So when he pulled back, I couldn’t resist snaking my hand round to the back of his neck and pulling him into another kiss. I didn’t want it to end, I suppose it could be called a hungry kiss. The kind where you pull someone closer, the kind where you want it to show them how you feel about them. That kind of kiss that says “you’re it, you’re the one, you are mine” was what I had aimed for.

This morning I woke up and realised that it is about time we celebrated that we have made it so far, given how resistant I was at first to let myself develop feelings for him. I remember it feeling like I was fighting the inevitable, like I was fighting a losing battle and it petrified me in some ways, falling for him if he wasn’t feeling the same. After how we started, it wouldn’t have been an irrational fear. We were only meant to be friends with benefits. Short lived. Turns out that was impossible, we ended up falling in love and no matter how much I tried to resist I knew that was what was happening. I tried living in denial. But we started dating and became practically inseparable. Like an addiction. When I feel weak and stressed and like there is the wildest hurricane of negative emotion in me just a small moment with him; a message, a call, a smile, a hug, a kiss… it just revives me and brings me to this irresistible peace.

Today I woke up and felt like celebrating, I guess total appreciation for where I am in my life now is pretty good. Even with family passing judgement today that I wasted so much of my potential and ended up in this job. But I am just thankful I did, because I am where I needed to be all along. I found someone that brings me peace, I found my vocation and passion, and I found a job to tide me over until my passion is financially justified. That is ok. I am happy and I am ready with all these good things going on with life…

There is no such thing as wasted potential. The families dream for me were different from my own, I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted. Until I started making those decisions for myself. Until I decided who I wanted to be none of it would have mattered and making them happy wouldn’t have made me happy. I wouldn’t be here now.

I know who I am. That is more than enough. I am happy with who I am. I am satisfied immensely and I know that there is an out pouring of good things, an abundance of everything I desire flowing to me with ease and joy. I am happy. I am in love. I am me. I am Elliot Parker, deliberate creator… who needs to work a little harder at consistently deliberately creating her life. But hey what’s a little contrast for a girl who has changed her life, saved it in some respects.

.: Entry One-Hundred and One :.

My name is Elliot Parker and it has been a long while since I paid much attention to my thoughts and I think that is now biting me on the butt big time. Counter intuitive I know, after all, your thoughts become things.  I have found myself trying to pull back from Dyl, not because I want to but because I have been worried I have been asking for too much of his time. I suppose I didn’t expect the old scars of the last relationship to be bothering me when I am happy, because I am happy. Yet here the scars are, seeping in and making me worry. I think all the time I was with Adrian I felt like I was always asking too much of him, too much a demand on his time because he never seemed to willingly give it, I know that was not how a relationship was supposed to be. And yet now, when Dyl gives me his time so willingly I am worrying I am overstaying my welcome in his company, that I am over stepping. Not because he makes me feel that way. But because I have learned to feel that way. I know it feels absolutely ridiculous and I can barely explain it to myself.

I suppose, I had harboured the fears for a week or two now. I suppose, perhaps triggered by a choice that was recently made. I said that he had to choose what was right for him. I meant it. I know that my concerns are probably one-hundred percent illogical. He chose a day off that would give us most of an evening together and to be fair he chose a day he wanted off. Part of me just seemed to get caught up in the worry that there was something more to it, something more to his choice of not going for a day where we would have off together. I suppose logic wasn’t the first thought or feeling perhaps I had, I suppose, it felt something more akin to feeling a little like hurt or rejection. Stupid but true. I suppose giving that some quiet validation and being able to then logically invalidate my concerns. Rather than harbour them and keep them quiet I stopped letting that concern fester and grow, I opened it into a conversation with Dyl at last today… it was completely illogical to have those concerns. It took less than five minutes to be able to dismantle the concerns with his support. Rather than taking them as an affront Dyl tried to understand the how and the why. Then showed me how he decided that the decision was aside of the concerns I had and reminded me that he wants us to move in together. And like that the concerns dissipated. It turns out giving the concerns a voice and bringing them to the table was the right path for us. It helped alleviate them.

Being able to talk about my concerns, allowing them that brief voice was the best way to dismiss them and turn them to nothing more than smoke in the air. It took its power away, it took the thoughts power away, the power to over think the concern was lifted and it became much easier to walk away from without that niggling after thought. That was exactly wanted.

I don’t think I could pull back from Dyl no matter how many times I have tried. When we first started talking, I tried and failed. When we first started hanging out, again I tried to pull back and I failed. As I developed feelings I tried again and failed. I don’t think it is possible for me to be able to pull away. I try to pull away when I am scared but with him it can at times be very much impossible to feel anything other than happiness and love and I know that it is right. I know that we are right, we are naturally drawn together because we make each other happy. We try to calm each other’s fears or concerns or worries. I know I fought us developing into a relationship for a very long time. I was so afraid of a relationship like the last but I know it would be impossible for us to ever replicate that. Our relationship is formed on so many wonderful things, on happiness and trust and patience and love and respect. How can a darkness such as fear and insecurity live in such bright wonderful feelings? The simple answer is that it can’t.

I am amazed every day when I wake up, there is no challenge to think of something wonderful. That very first thought of the day is no longer negative or a challenge to find that something wonderful. My first thought when I wake up is being thankful to have Dyl in my life. Starting the day with that one thankful thought can make it easier to avalanche a thought of something else wonderful and appreciative. Each day begins wonderfully with a thankful blessed feeling and every night ends with the same thankful blessed feeling. I can’t help but keep feeling lucky and sure and wonderful every day.

I think that my harbouring those concerns for that week without giving them voice and air to turn them to smoke couldn’t even stop my general happiness, sure it brought me into a little bit of a weird dissociative feeling. Like a strange funk. Like I had second guessed my own second guessing for a week, now that is over its kind of like a wave of quiet relief.

My name is Elliot Parker, and I am not going to be my own worst enemy anymore. I am just going to enjoy being happy and stop getting in my own way. Stop over thinking things. I am happy and that is important. I am safe and that is wonderful. I am in love.