Getting Lost

Wow the longest break from blogging since I started...have missed it ...but down in Suffolk visiting my oldest friend...not the oldest as in age , but in length of time of knowing.....amazing cottage in the middle of nowhere...so quiet. Catching up on all our doings and also getting a crash course on veg growin. Been planting seeds and picking last of the year's parsnips....Had time to think which has been invaluable. I musn't get distracted by other people's perceptions of me or other people's needs. I have my handful of good friends who never judge, and they are all I need.
Have felt a little lonesome again, and sad for all I lost, but that is probably healthy as it is still only a short time since the split, it would be foolish to think I wouldn't still feel pangs. It's good not being distracted by the poacher's needs...and brilliant news on that front..which may change the direction of this blog again. After watching him chug a minimum of three bottles of wine a day..He kicked off at the Drugs and Alcohol Service for keeping him and his liver waiting so long....and hurrah ! They got him a place from this week ! He's so happy. I drop him off Tuesday a.m. So glad to say I'll have my space back for a while and he can sort some of his shit out. Other people are helping too, so I don't feel like he is my responsibility. He wants me to film whatever they'll let me..which I think will be painful but a brilliant thing to do....for him. I don't think they'll let me in for the first 5 days though whilst he does the serious physical withdrawal, and he'll be Mr Librium anyhow.
I have psychotherapy sessions set up with my friend for him when he gets out, and I'm holding all his benefits ..so I think a couple of days after he gets out we'll go off for a week or two away from everything that he associates with drinking. It has been hard talking to him on the phone over the last few days...his so called friends are trying to get him to go on a three day pre-rehab bender....he's done incredibly well to resist..which is why I think he'll make it. We 'll see.

....As may have been obvious from my short absence...things are by no means resolved between me and the poacher...it's all gone a bit Lady Chatterley...he is definitely not your usual young tattooed, alcoholic .......he is very very funny and the most amazing chef...and since I lent him a camera has come back with some amazing photos..
I know, I know, I have gone straight back to saving stray puppy mode...but this time I think the odds are that I could help him,and I could learn a lot from him. I also feel he is genuinely appreciative of the small things I do for him, and tries his best to return every favour. He has pride. He is someone I hope I could be friends with for a very long time.
Despite his obvious inner rage and supposedly violent history he is not a thug, as many believe....far from it. He is accepting and open minded but will not allow anyone to bully him, his family or any else...and unfortunately has paid the price for this...with two prison stretches..although they are more related to his love of driving very fast when banned.... He is incredibly quick thinking and disarmingly eager to learn, curious and analytical.....failed as most of us were by the school system whch never even recognised his ADHD. It is amazing how many people only see the surface with him - the angry side...which passes like a cloud over the sun if you make him laugh..He never holds on to his anger and is never spiteful. Usually sunny and mischievous.
Well I may be denying all this next week.....but that's o.k, this is too small a town for acrimonious break ups.
No strings, no false promises.....and certainly no expectations....just someone to go to the Horse Fair with this year.....this time a man who can ride and drink and gamble and fight if necessary...the kind you should go to the Horse Fair with.....well maybe -definitely - not drinking !

How can I share anything in common with a 26 year old waiting to go into rehab, who has poor impulse control (o.k that is one thing in common), a fairly violent record, a thoroughly chaotic life , several kids already ...and more issues than there are tissues in the world, who has no key for where he lives and who turns up at my door with a bottle of wine in one hand and a dead rabbit in the other.
I don't know but he's an amazing cook, is utterly gorgeous, and he makes me laugh. A lot.

Oh dear....it can't be........not again.......

So I had to go and sabotage it all by pathetically giving into my hormonal urges and having the most inappropriate weekend fling I could have possibly considered and in the process alienating virtually all my new friends....and jeopardizing the unviolated sanctity of my lovely little home.....howzat !
Living in a small town means the bush telegraph is on everything you do within minutes and transforming every detail via the power of Chinese whispers......as if it wasn't bad enough already...and I foolishly thought he was a good option in the sense of it would be a one off-understood by both parties..a complete non starter and no one need ever know...he has shouted it to the world..........it has taken me four feckin days to get him out of me house..he rings me every hour....he is not going to give up easy....shit shit shit. Now what ?..Guess Brazil may have to happen sooner rather than later....When will I ever just stop and think...

Meant to write about this earlier in the week.....
Apparently the people of Longyearbyen, the northernmost town in the world, saw the sunrise last weekend for the first time since October.....I salute them for their steadfast resolve through the long dark winter, providing me with an excellent metaphor .....I also feel the darkness is lifting somewhat after months of losing myself in what felt like a stygian hell. I would love to visit the archipeligo,looking at a picture it is a magickal place, the prism colours of light reflected in the snow, the sloping white horizon....and I always wanted to see the northern lights from up there.....
Whilst swimming today, realised that this is the longest period of celibacy I have had in 19 years. Not funny.
No solutions spring to mind though as my attitudes have changed since those days. Not interested in casual, recreational sex anymore as rather difficult when sober. Depressing and generally unsatisfactory. Couldn't handle a relationship now or even in near future. Futile.
Where does one acquire bromide .......?

Calmer today..though the weather isn't. Tree surgeons over time bonanza week...
Read yesterday's rant. Anger does not give me clarity. I need to step back...feel where this anger is really coming from, try and hold on to myself before the red mist descends. Why do I get so worked up about injustice...unfairness, suffering...? Because I take it all personally. I am a disappointed and jaded idealist...which I think is where all cynics begin...
Understood a bit more today - now the shell is cracked open after all these years, of course I feel exposed and raw.... Still clinging onto the anger a bit , but I see it more clearly. My therapist had me drawing today which helped me to visualise the anger cycle...and where it needs to be broken, and she wants me to do some drawings as part of my therapy for next week...which have in turn inspired me to design a new tattoo...it would be the right time and thing to do when I'm ready as it would be a ritual and permanent mark of this painful process and a reminder for ever. Being a good mother to myself...so something based on the images of motherhood most redolent to me ...Our Lady of Guadalupe and the voudon deity Oshun,...as she is often depicted as a water snake ...which I have always wanted to get done anyway....and her stories are so appropriate for me...the voudon dancing queen weeping because no one can ever love her enough and the world is never as beautiful as she knows it could be. Mother to all the weak and suffering..will stick a picture of her up here to inspire.....
The dark arrows of comparison and self hatred still pierce and must be pulled out....the wounds allowed to heal...
I have decided to go to New York for my birthday, look up some projects and people I used to be in touch with..still need to sort Brazil out first...
I have been invited out ...the utopian peanut brain from last night will be there though...and they will all have been drinking since 6pm...should I, can I be feckin arsed ?

I got into an argument in the pub tonight, something I have been careful to avoid for several years. But this woman was the most annoying kind of aggressive, ill informed, snotty, liberal-we- can- all -join- hands- and- save- the- world- with- our- lovely- tie-dyed- head-dresses- idiot who took offence to my brief analysis of this country being in many ways worse off than it was 20 years ago. She defended her hopelessly naive rainbow tinted views,in her braying home counties accent, despite the fact that she has obviously never had to have these idealistic illusions challenged by having to work at the sharp end of an inner city education system for the past two decades.
Irritatingly nor was she even feckin old enough to remember the eighties and the fighting for rights and survival that went on...for what ?
So that everyone had the right to accrue huge personal debt, end up with bad teeth, be forced to give up more and more freedoms...and be watched 24/7 on CCTV ?
She has been safely tucked up here in the leafy green, not even remotely diverse, backwaters where the sharp end of poverty and multi-culturalism with all its worse excesses and manipulations has never had to be faced close up and personal...
I thought I had left a lot of the anger and frustration at some of the things I have witnessed and tried to challenge behind :-enforced female genital circumcision still commonplace in British backstreets, pieceworkers kept at their sewing machines by being forcibly controlled by heroin addiction, disabled children locked in cellars, bride burnings, honour killings, child trafficking....kids who have been carrying AK47s in forced militias thrown into failing inner city schools alongside kids from other warring factions......endless stories of mismanagement and worse. Though to me it was a learning curve and not all bad, often the humour and humanity shone through, but she didn't even want to acknowledge the shit that goes on !
It is the denial of problems for fear of offending...this is the real racism to me and failure to protect and serve everyone equally for fear of offending - in any given area - the minority majority, the vociferous and powerful within a politically useful community.
It is obvious that if you place individuals from exiled communities into areas with economic deprivation and scant resources there will be cultural and social ramifications and jockeying for status...
Divide and rule, it was always the number one strategy at maintaining the stranglehold of the top 12 percenters. To ignore the problems truly creates ghettoes, where services can be limited to create the right conditions for hopeless crime, then we can justify more cameras and more and more repressive and racist laws.
I became a teacher because I believe in education, in broadening minds, in empowerment and in real equality,not patronising tokenism and double standards.
It is a complex issue and not at all easy to address and I don't pretend to know the solutions. I have merely witnessed and reported what I have seen...and been threatened many times as a result.
I have often been accused of racism...by the same men who tried to burn the english books I was using to teach their wives.
You name it I have been called it, but my conscience is clear.
I have tried to help anyone who came to me as a student or relative of a student and wanted to escape an abusive situation, because basically I hate any sort of bigotted bullying, and will defend anyone's fundamental human rights regardless of what their culture or religion may dictate.
I have my own opinions based on personal experience. I believe I am entitled to them.
But No! - again I was told I was negative... How could I face life, believing that things aren't changing for the better ? That the people will not overcome and fly rainbow flags across the global village ?
How could I hold such a harsh view of the world ?
I apparently made this person get "quite cross". I wonder how cross she would be giving evidence in court about child rape by a religious and community leader ?
I do not regard facing reality as being negative. I accept that we all are capable of everything...I won't judge, but I will challenge.
I accept there is part of me on a personal crusade to save the hurt child in me (I see that for what it is, and never promise more than I can give within the parameters of my role or assume any of it is about ME ) but that is probably what motivates a lot of people, who have compassion for the underdog...whoever they may be in any given situation....
I understand there is always a big picture, and sometimes steaming in with uninformed best intentions can be a disaster. We need to be working with each other honestly without things which at the moment we can not say, books we can not read, cartoons we can not look at..., communities must evolve from within..but that means everyone in a community..not seperate communities within communities........asking ourselves hard questions...challenging apathy and not accepting too much that is wrong and unhealthy.
I am sad I let someone wind me up so much...and it proves that I am still a wee bit emotionally fragile !!!! and possibly spending too much time alone out the in the woods......I am losing my ...never particularly developed...social skills....and feeling isolated from all I used to be and know...
Thank goodness it is therapy day tomorrow.......

I thought I was making progress ..and maybe I am as I don't cry so much..but that is only because I hide from any reminders..as soon as any slight connection appears - and they are feckin everywhere! - I bubble like a baby..I thought about him pretty much constantly today and yesterday.....
Churning over and over whether I should be angry or sad, forgiving or vengeful, compassionate or implacable. Should I contact him or leave it ?
I wrote the 45th letter I didn't send to his mother......and tried to think of all the controlling, jealous nastiness of which there was a fair amount..and the one thing that hardens my resolve is the memory of when he lied about his e-mail to his ex girlfriend ..but to be honest I remember more the gentle, sweet and tender man....who sang to me with his guitar and ran my baths and cooked my tea and gave the best ever massages and kissed me in the crazy interior rain of Fuerza Bruta and whilst we watched Arcade Fire in Barcelona.....and who I skinny dipped with and canoed with and walked and took pictures with filmed with and travelled miles and miles with....and did so much in so short a time with, who showed me so much....my best friend who I miss so much.

Tears run like jewels
each holds my tiny world
until they burst.

Warm breeze, like fingers
pushes my hair back
I long for his touch.

My shadow weeps
beside the willow
the water shows me.

Going to the city really doesn't do me any good I have thought about him all day....and cried and sweated and yearned and burned. Will it really end ?
It is so hard resisting contacting him. I miss him so much.I miss his voice and the way we fitted together so well, so close, that there wasn't room to slide a knife between us...or so I thought....
I still can't fully believe I will have to live my life without him, after waiting so long to find him... it is as if I have had half of myself torn away.
If only I could go back and change the way things unravelled..of course with hindsight I see things so clearly now...what I should have done...but would it really have made any difference?..The little voices kept on telling me he wasn't really in it from the start despite what he said...Why didn't I listen? Was this self destructive implosion inevitable ?....It isn't what I wanted..I wanted space and time to give this relationship a chance. It hurts like hell that he cast it off so easily with no discussion as if it were just about him, what he wanted.
I definitely should have thrown him out when I found the e-mail to his ex-girlfriend...he either would have respected me more and tried harder....or I could have saved myself the humiliation and expense of Christmas...it was my own fault for not knowing when to say enough....and for loving him too much.

But at least it inspired haiku.....

When you spend all day thinking it's Sunday when actually it's Saturday ???? Dimanchement ??
It might be because I am an utter lightweight these days on the drinking front & got slightly pished last night.
Being in the city again had the same effect as last time..every corner, every street resonated with the memory of a meeting we had there, walking hand in hand down here....etc etc....I was wobbling so much by the time I hit town I drove into a van and pranged my shiny new vehicle..godamn! Managed to convince myself to keep a bit of perspective and use it as a wake up call to stop letting my feelings for him incapacitate me.
Things did not improve when I visited my old work place again...the same one where we met and where I had such a miserable time working In Feb.....
The place really is vile...it is an anachronistic, badly managed, financially unviable, personal ego trip for a dictatorial,fascistic old fraud, long past his sell by date who deludes himself that he is the pater familias of a democratic co-operative..peopled by a ragtag huddle of co-dependent passive aggresives who have been browbeaten and conned so long they are ill equipped and afraid to leave.....hideous...It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't pretend to be concerned with social justice.......such hypocrisy...and self delusion.....and the rats leap off as the ship goes down...
Can't even begin to paint an accurate picture of the place yet...though a thousand stories to tell at a future date....won't be long before it doesn't exist and I can spill all.....
Anyhow they owe me money - they didn't pay me...all the staff have "volunteered" to take a pay cut..cash flow problem....and then they didn't even let me install the software they promised me for my Macbookpro...how feckin rude....a second meeting was cancelled...boo!
Things improved then with a serious full on roots, highlights, haircut & all the little attendant civilities which accompany it...I have the best hairdresser in the world with the best attitude and an on going saga to keep me enthralled.....
Then in the evening a networking event at the theatre for performance poets which was brilliant -especially Malika Booker and Polarbear...very inspirational ....I have never been able to do anything more than mumble poems with head down...horrible - what a challenge , to hold the whole of the stage with just your words...
So I have signed up for performance workshops and mentoring ...MY WORST NIGHTMARE but got to be done . I will stand on that stage in June and slam for at least 5 minutes....trying to write the right something in a rhythm I can keep the pace with & remember the words in but which doesn't sound wrong for me....don't really know what that is yet....the bastard love child of Ivor Cutler and Patti Smith via Auden mixed by Saul Williams ????
I am doing it not because I am ambitious as a poet or hungry for any kind of recognition...I just want to face my fear and do it and enjoy it, for the sake of doing it, to feel it and own it and use it to try and fill a little corner of the big hole inside.

Might be another way to exorcise a piece of the past too....

Driving back down an unlit country carriage way, a wee bit stoned, earlier tonight. I reached the annoying bit of road works that has been the blight of my local A road for the past fortnight. I pulled up at the red light, and waited, 400 yards away I saw cars pull up at the lights at the other end of the roadworks. I waited as the amber lights flashed in the verge. I waited. I grew uneasy. Cars pulled up behind, cars pulled up in front. We waited, and waited and I got more and more paranoid that the red light was stuck. How long would I give it. If I started down the single stretch, What if the car at the other end did the same ? Was there anyone paying attention ? Should I beep my horn. How long should I give it ? Then I thought it would make a good prank this. See how long you could make people sit and wait for a red light that never changed.
hhmm.

Busy day tomorrow entering the underworld again...but only for a night..slim chance of a showdown...well not really but of a possible meeting at cultural event, where I shall act with complete composure and dignity...if it kills me...also I am taking someone with me designed to put him off balance, just in case. I don't want to be run off because he is there. I will kick myself afterwards.

Since reading about Hellinger's work at the weekend I have been thinking long and hard about this...
It reminds me of the ambivalence I felt in India about Buddhism - which I will return to later...
Being part of a family with a long tradition of taking on inequality and injustice, I find some exhortations to accept everything, to know I can't change anything, and not to get attached to anything somewhat dubious.
I accept compassion is essential, but not everything can be tolerated. When is acceptance just avoiding a difficult moral choice ? Is conflict always to be avoided ?
If the Working Classes hadn't rioted on numerous occasions on this septic isle from Watt Tyler to Cable Street to the Poll Tax riots, none of us would have even the limited freedoms we have now. If Working Class boys hadn't died in their thousands we may all be goose-stepping to the Volkswagen factory every morning. I know it wasn't just Working Class lads who have been cannon fodder down the years ..but they have usually died in higher numbers, then done equally dangerous, dirty and essential jobs in peacetime and then faced criticism for their rowdy behaviour in their precious hours off... Speaking as an ex-waitress, pissed up toffs are far worse, in fact they are vile, and their families can usually afford a decent solicitor or daddy plays golf with the judge....
In the 1930's members of my family and thousands of other families in this country were literally starving, whilst the rich courted fascism and eugenics, whilst allowing people to die for profit.
Meanwhile many left wing liberals argued and pontificated and formed splinter groups in Spain or went to Soviet seminars..
When the middle classes want change, but don't want to dirty their own hands then who does the dirty work? Then who gets called vicious and uncultured ? You can't have an army of limp wristed intellectuals can you ?(back to Spain - where my uncle Danny caught a bullet for a Cambridge educated poet who was having a panic attack - and still carried the useless twat down the mountain as he was such a coward....)
The point is this : Why should the likes of I - who have never benefitted from a superior education nor having the right connections to influential bohemians and intellectuals - be made to feel guilty about my justifiable anger at the inequalities in the world, and when someone treats me unfairly.
Why should I be judged for getting angry and having emotions ?
It was those emotions which have enabled me to fight for Social Justice effectively. Blood, red blood runs through my veins not blue feckin ice.
The suburban scaredy-cats moan about our dreadful binge drinking yob culture. Society gets the young people it deserves.....they didn't just happen, they have evolved from a sociopathic individualistic culture which defines our worth by what we spend and how we look. Ultimately there has been little social mobility in the last 15 years, the gap just gets wider.

In Ladakh, the population are Buddhists and so can't kill any sentient being...so they pay the Muslim butchers to do it.
Sorry but that is such a cop out...You can't pay to send your bad karma onto someone else surely ?
Or is that what the Working Classes are doing - eating up the bad karma of the middle class liberals....

I hate the word chav - it is a Romani word meaning boy and I really resent the way it has been used as some horrible catch all for sneering middle class kids and media to use about Working Class kids-who let's face it have feck all to aspire to - at least when I was a kid a degree was free....so I could afford a university education.

I am not bitter , despite what it might sound like, but I feel there will be a reckoning. Evolution is evolution and when resources get scarce who is going to survive .....Intellectuals, Journalists, Lawyers, Politicians, Snivel servants or those of us who know how to live in the woods and grow or kill our own food ? Will chav have the same meaning in 50 years time ?

Let me just add a disclaimer to this..I really am not feeling this maudlin..it is merely an attempt at applying a bit of form and structure to my burbling...this is an exercise in writing a ballad...hence tragedy, melodrama and guilt.....part of the requirement for the genre....it isn't an accurate portrayal of what actually happened though similarities to people living or dead are purely intentional.....

Oh ladies, I would caution please,
to heed what I must tell,
For he may come and your heart seize,
and drag you down to hell.

I was not looking for to stray,
a good man I had near,
My home, a hearth and happiness
and never any fears.

But as the leaves began to fall,
a chill began to lurk,
the blue eyed stranger dressed in black,
came looking for some work.

He looked at me in such a way,
a rose grew in my breast,
he dripped his honey in my ear,
my heart beat in my chest.

For many months he whispered low,
and said my man was cold,
that only he could give true love,
if I would be so bold.

And still the stranger ate with us,
between us at the table.
My man had one last chance to act,
by then he was not able.

In June I took the blue eyed man
to see the gypsy fair,
a fortune teller sealed my fate
by lying to me there.

And so I smilingly betrayed
the man who least deserved it,
and as our lips first touched to kiss
I knew one day I'd curse it.

A gypsy oath, a sunset red
and I was in his arms,
and all the angels sang to me
as he revealed his charms.

I could not lie to my good man,
I left him straight away.
I never knew a home again,
from that accursed day.

The stranger he did not like work,
but he was fond of spending,
I worked my fingers to the bone,
while he went on pretending.

And then with all the money gone,
my face so aged with worry,
he cast me off without a word
no thank you, nor no sorry.

I have no home, I have no man,
my youth and health are gone,
I live with shame , I live with guilt
for all that I have done.

I loved him more than words can say,
I thought he was an angel,
but he was evil to the bone,
that handsome blue eyed stranger.

So ladies, I will beg again
take heed of what I tell,
and if a stranger knocks for you,
you curse him back to hell.

I am working towards letting go of my love for him, I realise I still harbour some hope and this is what prevents me accepting it is over and leaving it behind. I suppose I can't believe it is over because I had so little say in the ending and no real goodbye...I am still angry and very hurt. I don't want to be , I want to feel love and compassion but it will take a little longer. for this reason I am not going to contact him about the money yet. I can't help the feelings I have , but I don't have to act on them, if I don't learn anything from this then it really has been a waste.

What we hold on to flees......I have been trying to hold on so tight all my life which is why I have lost everything....
I am starting to see the pieces of the jigsaw, maybe I can never have a relationship with anyone, because no one can ever replace the love that was missing when I was young, and I never want to feel so desperate and needy again, I would rather be alone forever. I used to be so bitter - o.k sometimes I still am, about the lack of commitment I have had from the men in my life, whilst I did everything I could for them.
However I did it, whatever needy pheromone I was exuding or whatever twisted way it works, I made sure I fell for damaged men who weren't capable of love or commitment.

Ta Da !

I wish I'd figured all this shit out properly twenty years ago though......

I spent nearly all weekend in family constellation workshops, with my friends the psychotherapists. Seriously intense. Much of the work was about the mother ...I felt very affected.
The work was developed by ex Jesuit missionary to the Zulu turned Psychotherapist Bert Hellinger and is a synthesis of all his understanding of quantum physics and that things only really happen if observed, Zulu methods of tribal conflict resolution and a variety of other techniques. A lot of tears , a lot of what I can only describe as near possession. very odd. I was skeptical half of yesterday and felt that it was some kind of auto suggestive con trick based on the fact that the seeker had already provided a bit of back story to the problem - and maybe this is true, but I did see at least one extraordinary transformation, and if it lets people let go of stuff in a ritualised and shared way they will really learn from and remember does it matter?
I went to see my mother afterwards. I try so hard and hate to be mean to her but am still angry at her sometimes.....I cried for an hour when I got home.
I didn't have the nerve to investigate any of my emotional minefields - I have an aversion to breaking down in front of people - but they have all pretty much broken down in front of me, so I can trust them a little more...so in a fortnight I shall attempt to let go of the anger and let go of HIM as much as I can in a session...and let go of all the other painful relationships I have dragged around for years, due to "interrupted reaching out movement" - when a child does not have love from its mother in the early years of its life, it leads to a neurotic cycle whereby a person is desperate for love but can not trust it and pulls away from it for fear of losing it.
Takes a bit of doing to break the habits of a lifetime, but fuck it there's nothing left to lose......

Well I say that now...the creeping paranoia that the short story and poetry I submitted with my MA application, were shite should probably hit around 3 a.m....At least I got it all in on time...though some hard copies need forwarding... But hey I did what I could.
Luckily the weather is abysmal so had no deep desire to go for a run or anything today and could concentrate on writing writing writing.....
Pleased with short story which made me cry as I was writing it...and I knew what was going to happen! So I'm either a proper soft arse (yes) or my writing was genuinely moving...
Went to poetry Master Class with Mimi Khalvati, who was wonderful, at the library - the same library I used to spend half my life in as a child... I met the New Writing Coordinator from Contact Theatre - in Manchester which was lucky and was invited to an event next Friday when I'm in Manchester anyway... which would be good but HE might be there...then again why should I scuttle around , I did nothing wrong, I'm not ready to see him again and won't be for some time but I can't hide away from my life...why should I allow him and his cliquey drama school luvie mates to keep me out of the loop ?.....We'll see...but another excellent networking event anyway. Mimi signed my book and encouraged me about the MA. Kate Davis - the current Poet Laureate of the South Lakes was there and we chatted again - she also wants to study this year and like me doesn't have the finances to wait another year...fingers & all crossed!
Met more of the Monday Night Poets, whose work I mostly liked although some more than others . I swayed as usual between feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness in the face of competition and eagerness to get writing new stuff and share it....Need to get an early night and brace myself for the emotional rollercoaster of a full weekend of therapy.......I may never be the same again......