‘Sweet dreams are made of this

Who am I to disagree

I travel the world and the seven seas

Everybody’s looking for something

Some of them want to use you

Some of them want to get used by you

Some of them want to abuse you

Some of them want to be abused’

(Song by Eurythmics)

I’ve always had a thing for redheads (mother issues) and Annie Lennox from the Eurythmics ticked all the boxes for me with her androgynous look and the lyrics to the above song simply stirred something inside the 13-year-old me, something that I had no words for, that I couldn’t even begin to express or explain.

Anyway, I digress.

The title of the song and indeed my blog are also the very same words that were sent to me by email, just last night. Why the blog based on two short words?

Firstly, the sender would never have used those two words together in the past, the exact words used were always ‘dream well.’ Secondly, I hadn’t heard a peep from the sender in about 5 years until last Saturday when he felt the need to email me to tell me that my presence had disturbed a dream.

Way back when, I suppose you could say that we disturbed each other’s dreams or at the very least, featured heavily in one another’s dreamscape. Well, he did in mine and led me to believe that the feeling was mutual. Thinking about him now, me thinks that I met him (online) when I was in fact looking for something without even realising it and I travelled the seven seas, albeit from the comfort of my chair until I found it.

I found something in him, a dream, an escape, an awakening, I found me. It was because of him that I dared to dream again, dream of a different life, one in which I was free to simply be me and that was more important to me than he’ll ever know. I don’t think I ever actually thanked him for that but hopefully I showed it in a myriad of ways, not least of all in my writing, the many poems written just for him. When I look back at old writings even now, I can’t help but think of him and wonder if it was all just a dream, did I dream him into existence when I needed someone, anyone to make me feel something, anything?

Sat here tapping away now, me thinks that part of the reason that I stopped writing here, was because I needed to stay away, that it was part of the process of weaning myself off him. Coming here was too painful a reminder for me, his presence lingers on even today, when I really think about it. I had to put distance between myself and those bittersweet memories, I couldn’t even begin to really write here again until I had exorcised his ghost, until I could visit here without my mind drifting towards him.

Did he use me? I can’t answer yes to that question without acknowledging the fact that if he did, then I undoubtedly used him to some degree too. I am a firm believer that the people who gravitate towards us, are meant to be in our life for a reason, whatever that may be and they will remain for as long as they are meant to.

Which leads me to the here and now.

Why, contact me after all this time, what purpose could it possibly serve?

Only time will tell…

“We make great progress only at those times when we become melancholy – at those times when, discontented with the real world, we are forced to make for ourselves one more bearable.”
Jean-Marie Herault de Sechelles (1793)

I’ve been sat here pondering the above quote, after an earlier conversation and it gradually dawned on me that I did just that, here. I created a world within a world, one more bearable than the reality of my day to day life and perhaps the reason I’d almost forgotten that this place existed is that when I finally began to shape and live the life I chose for myself, this my quiet corner no longer fulfilled a need, it was no longer more bearable than the real world.

I was forced to make for myself a world more bearable, both here and eventually, in the world beyond the screen. Coerced by circumstance, driven by a very real need to find myself before I was lost forever. I found myself here, in every sense and at the same time, I’m wondering if perhaps I also reinvented myself here, made myself into the image of the girl I wanted to be, wished to be or even could’ve been, if I’d been free to fly.

I was allowed free reign here, despite my wings being clipped. They didn’t shrivel up and die as one might imagine, instead something miraculous happened. Day by day, they grew in strength, developed texture and colour until there was no holding back, I was and I am free to simply be.

Well, as free as any of us ever are in this world we inhabit.

I started posting here in this quiet corner of cyberspace in October of 2009…it seems like a life time ago as I sit here now, reminiscing about so many things.

When I originally started this blog, it was as an escape from the day to day reality of a life lived…no that’s not strictly true, it was an escape from an existence in a life that bore no resemblance to living, I was doing my best to survive each and every day without totally losing myself. From the outside looking in, few suspected a thing, why would they? Ask anyone, they would tell you that my then husband was devoted to me, worshipped the ground I walked upon and everyone would agree how much he loved me.

And he would tell you the same because he believed it to be true. I believe I loved him too, to begin with and for a very long time but to put it simply, in the latter years of our marriage I was scared of him and that’s not what love should really be about.

Even now, sat here with the luxury of the distance of time and indeed, actual distance, I still find it incredibly difficult to put into words what he did to me because emotional abuse is so insidious that it almost crept up on me unnoticed, so subtle that it had me seriously doubting my own sanity towards the end.

In the end, I had no choice but to actually escape my reality because I would not have survived had I stayed.

A few years after the day that I ran for my life, I was having a conversation with my youngest and I asked them if I had changed much since then. Part of their reply was, ‘you don’t look dowdy anymore, you used to wear the most awful, shapeless clothes.’

When I was 16 and started dating my future husband, the phrase coercive control was unheard of. No one warned you that a male influencing how you dressed was a huge red flag, that it was a sign of things to come. I was young and in love, I over looked things like being questioned over how well I knew that lad who said hi to me on the street. I thought he was sweet and looking after me when he insisted that I wear a jacket over certain outfits, so that I wouldn’t get cold on a night out.

It’s a long list of little, seemingly inconsequential things, hardly worth arguing about that slowly chip away at you over the years until one day, you wake up and realise that you can’t remember the last time you left the house on your own and the very thought actually fills you with almost as much fear as the sound of him returning home from work.

This place that I made for myself here was my refuge. He didn’t know it existed. One day while he was out at work, I created a new email address so that I could set up a private space for myself, a space that wasn’t monitored by him, that he had no access to, a part of me that he had no control over. I think creating a safe space for myself here, saved me. It helped me realise that writing away from his prying eyes freed me to just be and in doing so I unconsciously began to break free of the hold he had over me until I was strong enough or desperate enough, to leave.

And now I’m back here in this quiet corner, typing out my thoughts…tonight anyway.