Getting Lost

I didn't sleep or eat agin, I try but I feel so sick with loss. I drift off to sleep and forget, when I wake, soon after, I imagine he is lying there next to me..but he isn't. I feel like half of me is missing. The world is just noise and greyness I am tumbling down a deep hole. I get up very early and take the dogs along the canal to the sea. The salty air smells like my tears..which never cease.Everywhere are reminders of our long stoned walks. this is my favourite time of year when the banks are fat and green with foxgloves and yarrow and everywhere buzzes with life, but it feels desolate. I go to work I cry because the printer won't work. I tell my colleagues not to expect too much from me at the moment. It feels better to be out of the house.
Then he phones. My heart knocks so hard I feel it might burst. He says he is sorry, so sorry, he cries. He says he's sober, I believe him, I want to believe him. He says all the right things for once..that he can't hurt me anymore so he must try and sort himself in a place of his own. He recognises a lot of what he needs to do to get to the bottom of his pain and depression. But we can't be together, so I cry. Though I know he's right. I do too much for him. I am happy because it is really the healthiest solution. We agree to take the dogs out together tomorrow night. I can't wait to see him, I ache for him even though I know he isn't mine, never was.
I feel positive, like I can go on, even if we are just good friends. I manage a little lunch. Fork to mouth and
my friend Klee rings, he says the Poacher has just been round to his. he has told him that he is still drinking a bit, but can handle it.
Everything whites out for a moment.
He is still sitting drinking with that stupid bitch. Why does no one in this town understand what being an alcoholic is ? What it means? Have they never seen him go in a toilet with bottle of whisky down his keks and crawl out on his hands and knees five minutes later ?
Now it makes sense - he hasn't suddenly gained wisdom...he doesn't want to come home because now he has somewhere he is allowed to live and drink...until of course he quickly gets very messily out of control....
He is just trying to con me into remaining a possible means of support...and to get me to let him have Roma-if he is drinking-over my dead body. My dogs are my life. He has never fed them nor taken them to the vet. If I find out he is lying when I see him tomorrow, then it really will be the end of us even as friends.
Maybe I really am so unlovable that I can drive even homeless, desperate people away.
This is so draining..when will I be able to let go?

Each day without hearing anything is interminable. I hear he is sober but he doesn't contact me. It hurts so much the co-dependent in me, that maybe I am not his saviour. I know this relationship is not entirely healthy for each of us. But we fit, I love him. I have to let go but its hard ripping out all those little fish hooks in my heart one by one. If this truly is over - sometimes it seems so, then my hopes arise- I have to get used to solitude. I can't face more endings, not for a very long time.
The dogs are confused and I dread him trying to take them- he isn't responsible enough- but I will struggle to look after them properly alone, whilst working.
Why did he need to fuck it all up again ? What was he trying to avoid or force ?
What a shit birthday.

It was inevitable I suppose. Once again misplaced faith due partly to my desire to think the best of the people I am drawn to, and partly because the person in question chose to be a duplicitous weakling. This is the third of the Poacher's relapses, but is the last for me I'm afraid as I feel that he is truly destined for the park bench wallowing in white lightning and self pity. I did my best. It was never going to be enough to fill the hole he's been gnawing into himself for years. He is now shacked up with a woman to whom I poured my heart out yesterday...they are drinking together in her house even as I write this...her two kids watching mummy take in another drunk...until he steals her money and puts his fist through her walls, leaves her front door open and leaves fag burns in her furniture. I told her what he did this weekend and that those who enable his drinking are ultimately killing him...but she chooses to believe him with his glistening tear filled eyes...they are very hard to deny.
Whenever I have to go away or want to go and see my friends or do anything for myself he manages to sabotage it. Last month I had planned for ages to go to the Strawberry Fair with my mate , backstage passes etc. The night before he gets pissed at work, hits the head chef then drinks vodka walking back and starts screaming at me when he gets home. I try to throw him out, he screams in my face, I ring his Dad, he doesn't want to know. I threaten him with the police , weep and ask him why? He leaves with Roma, me clinging on begging him not to take her in that state. I don't sleep.
Later his brother rings me, he has Roma. Chris picked a fight with him and three others in the pub and got banged up for the night.
He rang me from the cop shop in the morning. He was sorry. Would I pick him up. He looked bloody awful. He had two black eyes and broken ribs. I couldn't leave him alone in my house, not just because he was ill, but I can't trust him. I tried to be understanding. He came. I drove over some speed bumps quite hard. I can't say I enjoyed the weekend, surrounded by pissed up hippies with a wincing desolate panda trailing around behind. He gets £100 pound fine . His pending appeal to get his driving licence back early due to sobriety is now dead in the water, his ex partner will use it against him in his access hearing. He is ashamed - he says, though I don't see a proper apology to his brother.
He has sunk deeper into depression ever since, no job, no money and he knows he has to steer clear of his drinking buddies. He broods. He won't go out. I run around in circles to try and motivate him. I find him the best psychotherapist I can afford. He is not happy , but he won't open up to me. I finally get him to the therapist. I go back in an hour expecting a sour face but he's smiling, seems positive. Has another appointment Monday (today).
Friday night he seems cheerier, goes to see his brother. When I ring him, he lies about the fact he's actually with his arsehole drinking mates as well. Tells me his brother has done some acid for the first time and should stay with him. I agree.
I have planned to go to Manchester to see mates, get a haircut and run errands the next day. He was supposed to come because it is Carnival day...a community day of binge drinking and settling old scores. He said he wanted to come, to stay out of trouble. Take the dogs up to his brother's in the morning to collect him. They have just got in. They are both totally wired. I kick off because he has fooled me again. He cries says I am being unfair. he has done 5 tabs of acid. We argue. We talk it through. It makes me late but we make things o.k , we kiss each other goodbye.He has decided to stay with his brother and protect the allotment from drunken vandalism.
Three hours later I am having my hair washed and he rings to tell me he has to explain something. I can't hear him, tell him I'll ring him back when I can. Just twenty minutes later and I've lost him...I can hear the alcohol suffuse his voice with rage and blame. I don't engage. He denies he is drinking.I do what I have to do. I ring again, explain that if he has had a drink he can't stay in my house. He knows the rules. He goes mental. He hangs up. All the way back my heart is pounding. My phone keeps going. I pull over. His brother is sobbing down the phone to me , I hear them screaming at each other then at me. I have to hang up. It is lashing with rain. What the fuck is going on? I get another call, he says he is cutting his fingers off one by one and I have to get there fast. I have been done for speeding twice in the last year, but its hard not to floor it and just get home.
I get a call from the police. They have Roma, she was found on a busy stretch of road near where I live. My heart is pounding I swing between terror and anger. The journey is agony. I get another call. He is going to kill himself, why have I done this to him. I can't speak. Tears pour down my face and a stone weight of grief crushes my chest. Why? Something snaps I tell him not to dare top himself in my house as I'm not fecking cleaning it up and turn off my phone.
I go to his brother's house, I'm too scared to go home alone. My camper van is parked outside. The Poacher has taken it and driven blind drunk to his brothers where he starts on me again. I am sorry to say I lose my temper. I tell him he is weak and that he needs to grow a set and stop torturing everyone who truly cares about him. He attacks his brother, he is raging, cowering in terror and howling like an animal by turns. He is threatening to hurt himself and destroy the house ( his brother lives with his parents -they are on holiday). He is incoherent. I can't calm him down. I call the police , I hope they can lock him up for a few hours again, let him sober up. They arrive, he is suddenly calm and they refuse to do anything other than get my van and house keys back. He turns as he leaves with them, and says he hates me and his brother.
We cry for a while. His brother says this is the last time. I haven't slept since.
For two days we don't know if he is dead or alive. In the process of trying to track him down I explain to the colluding woman what has happened, as someone said they had seen them together. She denies it. Offers sympathy. Someone else confirms it. I ring her ask her if he's drinking. She says "only shandy" I cry, she passes the phone to the Poacher he whines about how his brother and I have treated him, he plays to the crowd I can hear in the room. I hang up. I pack his things -anything he can't sell for drink anyway, and dump them on her step. I drive away heart hammering in my chest. In shock. So hurt and most of all feeling really really stupid for putting myself into this situation - being drawn to another lost cause...and paying the price. Back to square one only a lot poorer, two dogs in tow and a desire to move as far as possible from this town...but I have an MA to finish and a demanding job, and I have to grit my teeth and get on with it, trying as hard as I can not to get sucked into his games anymore.
As I only seem to be attracted to utter bastards ( despite the therapy it is very hard to ignore the physical attraction that is somehow intertwined with the vulnerability and lostness), I can't trust myself and must make a solemn oath to learn to deal with loneliness and no matter how long the night, avoid all physical relationships with men as I can't seem to differentiate decency from spineless deceit.
I cringe at what I once wrote about him, why on earth did I think I could save him? I cry at the photos. I love him very much, he can be so lovely, but it is futile. and painful.

I just realised how long it's been since I wrote anything herein ! I have to churn out two pieces of writing a week for my MA which leaves me barely capable of stringing a few sentences together...although..my taught sessions/ workshops will soon be coming to an end and I'm on my own to wrestle with my portfolio. I will need the idea of an audience to write for/to again soon.
I also need an outlet to spew forth my ire about that scourge of the poor and helpless..feckin
(anti) social workers. Travelling folk in my childhood rightly called em "the Cruelty".

When I'm not arguing about story arcs and sonnets in workshops, I battle futilely on behalf of disabled people who are vulnerable to the easy manipulation of the parasitical care system :- so called Social Services and the commercial "Care" providers they commission.

Just a tiny corner of a dysfunctional system:

Disaster happens due to incompetence at a variety of levels within the care system, regardless of whether adult's or children's services. The system is overloaded and fragile however the direct honesty and transparency which could address some of the failings is traded for stalling and arse covering spin.

Tell the truth - lose your job.

Government enquiry (ie a scapegoat is blamed and sacked , a new White Paper sets out recommendations)

White Paper recommendations and Human Rights over ridden by the bottom line of ruthless management of budgets slashed due to the destruction of our economy by bankers , lawyers and war mongering politicians.

I am supposed to drag confused "service users" around the county to be consulted at a series of fake head patting exercises which cruelly infer that people will be listened to, whilst using people to massage the bullshit monitoring.

I fail daily to protect the basic Human Rights of the people I work with whilst being sneered at by social workers who withhold information, use dirty tricks and play with people's lives as if they were dolls.

Up to now I've been learning how it works here, who the ones who control it all are. I've kept pretty quiet. It seems they underestimate me.

I'm keeping records. I'm listening and making extensive notes. I have my cameras and my microphones. He He He.

Keep you posted.

See my new bitch in photos....psycho terrier Bracken. The Poacher turned up with her one stormy Sunday night, wrapped in his coat with a death sentence hanging over her for ripping the ear off a Pomeranian.

The bed is mighty crowded these days !

Life still good.

In Plumpton Woods

Her long leap clears the beck.
A second, held by air,
perfect stretch of muscle,
carved from tail to muzzle.

Snout to scent, a second’s
calibration sends her
off in an explosion.
Hind to fore legs scissor,
drumming silently
to our muffled ears,
but deep within blackthorn,
far beneath, in tunnels
linking burries, soil falls.

Under an Autumn moon
silver etched hedges sway,
shivering, they whisper,
The midnight hunter’s prayer;

Wind blow our milky stench
from buck and jenny doe,
sweep away, breath and step
so silently we go.
Wrap cotton round the moon
and cloaks of black for us.

The wind, obliging, does.

Leashed now, she strains, eyes bright,
inhales the loamy night.
Held fast against my thigh.
both crouching low to stalk,
through damp long grass, ten yards.
We hold and then ten more.

I feel her silent yelp.
She tenses beside me,
I know to raise the lamp.

Another twenty yards,
in the hedgerow’s shadow.
The scuts of two, no, three
flick up, some freeze and stare,
eyes illuminated.

Ten yards, I slip the lead,
and her trajectory
describes a perfect arc
towards her chosen doe.
The others scatter wild.
It tacks from left to right,
panicking for cover.
The bitch stays on its heels,
coursing close,turning tight
abreast, she reaches, grabs
and fails, accelerates
with predatory grace,
turning so quick I fail,
to keep them in my beam,
for moments I am blind,
hearing the thrashing field.
I sweep the fatal light
in terror of her harm,
a broken leg or neck.
She can not stop her self.
I breathe as they fly past,
like beads on the same string.
She reaches, twists her throat,
already slowing down
the quarry in the turn.
Her jaws spring shut and lift,
a scream, her brakes are drawn.
Trotting back , she has to readjust
to hold the kicking prey.

Softly she lays it down
Without a single mark,
much gentler than the male.

I grasp it by back legs,
Pull the neck out and down,
until I hear a snap.
She comes close for petting.
I stroke her head and neck.
We salute the escaped,
and thank the fecund earth.
The moon is nude again,
revealing other paths,
and deeper in the woods,
beyond the edge of night,
we go.

Well I'm still here which is more than can be said than for some of the characters previously mentioned on this blog......The poacher managed to climb back on the wagon and spent a week in bed ill as hell with alcohol poisoning. he denied all the vile things he said when drunk ...which in short all referred to the ending of this relationship.....and though he never said any of the things a less jaded and cynical me would once have liked to hear, he did say he didn't want to be alone...and neither do I ...so we are still together...being kind to each other, never arguing , but me constantly waiting for him to inevitably up sticks and depart on an age appropriate adventure..which of course i could never get in the way of...

So I still do battle with myself..... Why am I always made to feel so clingy....all I ever wanted was to be in a relationship with someone who had reciprocal feelings and wanted to appreciate mutual care....I have my own life....my own friends....Is a loving equal partnership an impossibility in the 21st century ?
I'm self supporting, self sufficient......aahh never mind...I finally accept that for some of us (most of us ?) this never happens...
Well it does...and then it proves to be an illusion and is ripped away....
Anyway poor me blah blah.....it isn't that tragic.....just annoying....
So I went into battle with those that gave him drink...and battle lines are still drawn as far as I am concerned...he agreed he needs to avoid the parasites he used to call friends....and I have accepted that I can't police his every move and it is up to him who he sees...but...two individuals in particular I can't forgive..on my behalf not his...they laughed at my pain.....I shake when I see them....
and now one of the drinkin buddies is dead....at 41....due to drinkin and drivin..and suddenly this tragic sad and lonely figure has become everybody's hero......
I can not attend the funeral..it is a farce...the drunken friends battling with the mother about where he should be buried...shameful !
Once again I bite my tongue...I have been to too many funerals this year..

I took Roma home with me last night to kind of say goodbye. We had a long walk and she cuddled up on the bed with me. My brain sifted and shifted and the things he said and did revolved around and around. I tried meditation, counting back from 1000. In the end I got up and wrote him a letter.
He had promised to get the dog early before I had to go to work...I didn't expect him..he didn't turn up. As early as possible I dropped off his stuff, Roma, and the letter, which basically said we all have to face our demons or at least try and I couldn't do it for him and wasn't going to enable his irresponsible life anymore.
I always saw myself as weak for getting into drugs in the first place but I gave up heroin at a slightly younger agethan he is, and coke ten years later, both were an addiction, both fed my self destructive urges, and once I thought about it last night....it wasn't people being kind that made me strong enough to stop, it was real friends who told me my shit stank....I understand the dynamics and the need, but I had no one pulling me out of the shit everytime I fecked up, he has to grow a set.
I have to focus on my life, which I find incredibly hard- true to co-dependent form. I had to lock my phone in another room to stop myself from checking it every five seconds and resist the urge to get up in the night and drive around the places he might be to drag the bottle from his hand.
My friend pointed out a simple fact. If you run after an awol dog it will just keep running away. If you run in the opposite direction it will follow you.
I'm running.....let's see whether he can jump down off his cross and pull himself together, and if I can
resist worrying and wondering about him all the time, and love those who show me love in return.

t

Swerving and diving
you scuttle and creep,
hiding round corners,
avoidance techniques.
Duck every question,
pretend you don't hear,
fend off all contact
always unclear.
Lies coming easy
answers untrue,
twisting and turning
no holding you.
An outline so hazy
your'e just out of reach
I'm worn out by trying
not sure you are real
I need to untangle
because you can not feel.

I should have established the boundaries but somehow he managed to leave me hanging again...
I met him at his initiation -in a pub ! He didn't seem drunk but he was on something ( heavy duty downers it seemed like) and virtually incoherent so it was pointless. He admitted he needs to stop drinking but it wasn't very convincing and he's still full of self pity but oblivious to the pain he is causing to so many people. I didn't get so much as a half assed sorry...
He dashed off somewhere-he wouldn't say where or why after about ten minutes of throw away "of course I love you" blah bullshit.
Tomorrow I definitely try again and stick to my guns. He gets his stuff and a last wave.
If he uses it to justify going off on a bender, I won't feel guilty.
If he's looking for sympathy he'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.

I ate calzone at a big meal with my friend the Italian psychotherapist & family & friends last night and thank god they made me laugh at myself and remember who I am and where I've been and what I know...and what I need and don't need.
I worked really hard not to try and contact Poacher or find out where he was. There were messages from his family through the day about suspected sightings-good and bad which kept the tension notched up, as I drove a round trip of four hours of very windy moorland road and had my head pulverized by 7 hours of intensive advocacy training . I had to let my (very new) manager know what was going on as I was a bit wobbly and wired as I hadn't slept at all for three nights. In the end it broke down some barriers and a few people got a bit weepy at certain harrowing sections of the training...
Then the Poacher sent a terse text to say he'd be at mine at 7. I didn't know what I wanted other than to find out exactly what happened and as far as possible why....though I already guessed impending responsibility was a major factor.. I prepared myself mentally to stay strong..and not to give in to my inner hurt baby...despite the fact that by the time he arrived the butterflies were overwhelming and i was shaking.
I knew immediately that he was still drinking from his belligerent expression and the red spots on his cheeks. I was so disappointed. He went off on his self pity tirade and I just listened, despite hearing things that no matter how true or insane, were hurtful and sad...he hasn't wanted to be with me for a while and was too scared to say anything because I went on so much about the actor and how badly he'd hurt me ...and sadly it's true... he did tell me face to face in the end, he at least had the balls to finally do that unlike the actor..
I was sad of course but I don't want to live like this anyway. Unfortunately he wouldn't completely admit that him having a drink was the problem...he still pretended firstly that he hadn't, then that it didn't matter, then that he hated everyone and himself and no one cared etc etc...I was wanting him to break down and face up to what had happened....but he didn't.
I then offered to drive him and his clothes to whichever doss house he was staying in, and he hesitated.
He started to calm a little, and I realised that even though we won't be together it doesn't matter, what is important is that he doesn't continue to drink. I showed him photos on my laptop of before and after rehab, as Jack (cheers) suggested. I also suggested if he wanted to destroy himself he should do the decent thing, and get it over quickly, instead of drip by drip and hurting other people around him.
He asked me to keep his stuff until he'd sorted his head (?) out, I told a little fib-that I wouldn't stick around to see him slowly destroy himself and had a flight booked to tomorrow......and if he wanted his stuff he had till then to decide if he could grow a spine and face life without drink or slither back into the bottle.
I'll let you know.....