At the beach


We're on holiday this week in deepest Devonshire .... although it's just called Devon theses days. I like the "Austenesque-ness" of adding the shire though.

Anyhow the "we" in this case is, Trev and I, my sister Kath and her mob, and my middle brother Brendan and his mob. All seemingly normal eh? Families are rarely if ever normal though. In the last 37 years I've spent less than five days in Brendan's company ... and that's a generous assessment of the time we've spent together.

T'is odd. He seems both familiar and unfamiliar all at the same time. And I feel the tug of those ancient deeply held resentments which would be all too easy to dwell upon. But that would detract from what is a HUGE opportunity to start a healing process both long overdue and much longed for ... at least on my part.

Like many children whose backgrounds are scarred by abuse we are ... or at least have been ... a fractured family. Long decades of not a word and now? It seems we have to choose. Shall we ask why? Why did you take yourself away and lock us out? Why did you compound the hurt already done?

Except I already know why. To stop more hurt it can seem like a good option to shut ourselves away from all that's gone on in the past, create a new persona and live that life instead. I get it. Compassion is not a soft option that's for sure.

I get to know my nephew Liam though as well so instead of two small(ish) boys I now get to play with three. I'm off to the beach to try to fly a kite.

Here's hoping for fair winds.  xx Jos

Making Friends

You'd think it would be easy enough
I meet people all the time
I chat
They chat back
And then either I or they
Go away.
I wonder sometimes if I should hibernate
As is my instinct
I know it's supposed to be wrong
Are we not social creatures.
Why is it so hard to make friends?

I lack courage
Time and again I come to this sober conclusion
Which I question
And then acquiesce
How to refute the truth of it.
I am sad to find myself so alone
A situation of my own making
The unmaking of which
Quells even the prospect of bravery
Shall I instead spin my cocoon
In the hope of metamorphosis?

Frustration battles procrastination
A solid feeling fear based lethargy
That threatens to consume
Not solely my present state
But my state-to-be
And I
I battle alongside with the wanting
And not wanting all at the same time
Somehow though I still believe
It should not be this difficult
Where then the fault?

The case for perseverance
Needs to be made
If only for the sake of balance
And to offset the bleakest
Of all prospects
That of continuing in the same vein
With the same result
Or non-results.
Tell me then
How is it that you go about
Making friends?