Another chance

This Sunday (15th) was our one year anniversary.
Who knew our relationship would make it to this milestone? And the best thing about reaching this point? We can start reminiscing!
So, here we go:
One year ago i wrote my first post. I was stuck in a job which just about paid the bills but ultimately made me miserable. I had no time and no energy to do anything but work and go out (to try and forget about work).
One year on, i'm completely broke, almost maxed out on borrowing power- but happy. Not only have i found an outlet for my thoughts here, but i have brought one of my other projects to stage one of it's life.
At this point, i still have no definite idea about how i am going to earn from now on. But i needed this space.
I'm even talking to people about collaborations! Me! Me who has always worked away on her own and thought that working with other people meant losing that all important control. I'm going to do a project with a friend who is a dancer, choreographer and writer. I'm also talking to a friend who is a DJ about making a film. Watch this space for further details.
It's bizarre. Even though i'm in the least stable position I've been in a long time i feel strangely assured that everything is going to be fine.
I also realised something massive about my emotional/relationship life. I have realised that everything i have done in this area in the last thirteen years has been a form of self-punishment. This seems incredible (how could i have been doing this for so long?)
Thirteen years ago i terminated a pregnancy to a totally unsuitable partner. I absolutely knew i could not have a child with that person. Not a shadow of a doubt, that would have been a disastrous move at that point in my life - just finished university, substituting my first part time teaching job by working in retail. He treated my pregnancy like an occupational hazard. There was no need for debate.
I ditched him, he was angry, it was ugly, but worst of all, i felt as though i had killed someone. Depending which way you look at it, maybe i had. My friends that didn't go to university were getting married and having children. I consequently embarked on a single-minded quest to pursue relationships with men who either could not or would not be with me in any real way.
This revelation, the common factor in my messy history has only come to me in the last month or so.
I want to say, not for anybody else's sake but my my own, that i forgive myself. I forgive myself for the decision i made in those circumstances. That impossible decision that lurks somewhere in women's minds if not directly then through our friends, our mothers, our sisters lives.
I'm not a bad person. The reason i have not manged a relationship in the last thirteen years is because i have forgotten how to be nice to myself. i do remember what it feels like to be loved and i acknowledge that it scares me. I love passionately but most of all i deserve and look forward to being loved in return.

Untold Stories! New- with sound!

Ewww! I've finally got round to putting music with my posts!
The joys of unlimited free time!
This has made my week. I've gone back through all my posts and put in soundtracks for some of them.
Not all the songs that i wanted were available. Nonetheless, i am a happy woman!
If you've got time to scroll back you can hear all kinds of Nina Tunes.
There's one addition in particular that has an important function.
If i haven't mentioned my love-life lately that's because there has been a hiatus. I need to say googdbye to someone and that track is my goodbye. I usually have to force myself to cut off from people when a relationship ends, "Now you really need to stop thinking about x, y, z. It's not going to do any good to think about it any longer." etc.
But this has been different- which is odd considering i just spent the last eighteen months (?) thinking about that situation far too much.
I've just stopped. I have no plan, no strategy in place, it's just gone. It's not even vaguely there in the back of my mind. It pops up now and again, but i don't have the desire to go into it any further.
So, this is it. I did not get a chance to say a lot of the things that i wanted to: so this is my goodbye.

To my future husband:
i know what you're thinking.....
You're thinking, " Is she going to write about me like that? Is our relationship going to be the subject of the love of my life's on-line ramblings?"
Although you will deny it, you are the coolest guy in the universe. Our life/relationship will not be documented here, because it will be swirling and whirling around us; wrapping us up and keeping us warm and happy. It will be too real to be pinned down, consigned to words and then history. It will be now, not then. And when we get together; i will just have to find something else to write about.

A Girl walks into a bar...

and it reeks of toilet cleaner!!!!!!
So, we all had our first outing this weekend in 'Smoke Free Britain". And we've all heard what smokers think about it. But what about those of us who don't smoke (anymore). I mean, i've always known i've been inhaling carcinogens every time i enter a bar (whether first or second-hand) but i didn't realise i was also inhaling noxious industrial strength toilet cleaner. It's revolting! I much prefer the smell of smoke! A couple of bars were burning incense but good lord, as if that's going to mask whatever it is they use to do whatever they have to do to clean up after us. I found it most disturbing/off-putting- i certainly wouldn't eat in a place that smelled like that....
And then, you're standing there having the usual backward and forward mixture of gossip, stupidness and lahdy lah lah when suddenly your companions all look at each other and say, "Okay, we going outside then?"
Not only is this inevitably at some crucial point in the conversation, but then to cap it all, the non-smoker has to 'look after the drinks!!!!!' I need a strategy here otherwise i'm going to be doomed to be drinks-looker-afterer for ever more. i think i need to make a badge that says, As a non-smoker i abdicate all responsibility for any drinks or their contents, whether known to me or otherwise tampered with, left in my (drunken) charge.
Although this is clearly weather dependent, the conversations outside take far too long for my liking. Of course, they're all standing there talking to other smokers about how awful it is!
So the smokers are out there making 'new friends' while the non-smoker is guarding the bloody drinks.
I even went with them on the fifth or sixth trip out.
There's only one thing for it.
I'll have to start smoking again.