The lady brawler

It’s ok, I get it, a lot of people think that I am nice and sweet and I am gentle and ladylike; lots of people think that because I am kind to them and I always generally try to choose to have a passive stance that they can walk all over me.  They don’t believe for one second I’ve had the life I have had, they can’t see how I can be Lady Penelope one minute and then a backstreet brawler the next and I get it, I can see why that’s hard to chew!

Because I have transitioned so far away from what my mum made me into, deliberately.

I’d love nothing better to sit back and be a lady and never to have to use fighting talk again, but when I do that – people take advantage and I am not going to let that happen!

I have had enough of being subdued by people who think that they are better than me, when obviously they are not if they can be mean to someone.

When I used to be thin and I used to be fit, I had a lot of admirers; I had a lot of people wanting to be in my crowd; did I bully them?  No, because I am nice.  The only people I ever said an unkind word to, was those I heard saying things to others, to put them down because they thought I wanted to hear that – because they thought a pretty girl is always like that and they’re not!

I remember my closest friends were bullied a lot by other pretty girls and some wannabes – my closest friends had a lot of problems, such as physical disabilities and one had a particularly bad stammering problem.  A couple of my friends were pretty, but too poor to spruce themselves up – I was a kind and fierce protector of those girls. 

This is one of the reasons why I don’t make friends with women easily, because I hate to say it – there is a lot of body image discrimination and I am not somebody who sits back and lets someone be mean at those who are disadvantaged – I am one of those who will be mean to anyone who tries to be mean in general to a person’s disability or physical bodily appearance. 

Fashion wise, yeah, I can snipe because why on earth would anyone want to wear cowboy boots with a Charleston cocktail dress?  I mean… come on!

But this post isn’t about me being a defender of friends or a fashion critic – this post is a little more of an insight to how I have been raised and partially why my life had been so full of violence regularly, even outside of my family circle.

My parents were rockers, part of the mods and rockers conflict. 

My mum in particular, in her first marriage was the leader of the gang’s wife!

Even when she left the rockers, there were still old memories sticking around even to this day some people will still challenge her, if they remember her and recognised her!

This isn’t all, my granddad was also a backstreet boxer and wrestler to earn extra money over the years and we have associations with others which I won’t name.

Amongst all of this, quite a lot of my family have been alcoholics or substance abusers and well anyone who knows about that sort of thing, can more or less tell, what comes into a person’s life once that happens!

So with all of this going on, there was always a reason, sometimes many for why people would boulder into my family home and beat the crap out of someone.  There was always some kind of reason for it.

Growing up I had to take a lot of scapegoat beatings from people who merely attacked me for my association with my family, some backed off when they found I was the good apple of the family and not like the others – but others used me as a target sometimes to provoke my family into reigniting their wars!

This is what I had to live with and accept!

I think partially this is why during my early adult years I became afraid to go out alone and I still am – I am happier and feel safer in small groups of people and this is a huge part of my PTSD.

But it doesn’t slide away from the fact that my own mother wanted to shut me away too – funnily enough not to shelter me from it all, but just because.  Because wherever possible, my mum used to try and push me forwards into any fray that was happening because it’s great life experience, toughen yourself up and oftentimes she’d leave me fighting her battles alone whilst she sneaked off!

She told me never to phone the police about these things, the last time this happened, I did, because the person tried to set three dogs onto me, whilst mum snuck back off to sit in her car watching it like some kind of blood sport and did so with noticeable relish!

So when people think they can challenge me for my looks or personality, or even think that they can get one over me by slapping me across the face – they are often left in a state of shock!

Because, this nice sweet, polite, timid exterior of a girl – fights and fights hard when challenged and I don’t back down, because to back down shows weakness and I have had harder beatings from my family for showing mercy and weakness, than I can ever get from an adversary!

I remember when I refused to hit someone with a stick once, four of my own relatives turned on me and beat me with sticks to teach me a lesson and I was 7yrs old, two of them were adults!

That’s what things were like for me, so don’t think you could ever knock me down and keep me down – I am too much of a fighter for that and I have a huge amount of resilience and stamina when the instinct to survive is turned on!

Thanks for reading!

Pollyanna is dying

Pollyanna is dying, a slow and awkward death

She wants to stay positive

But should she hold her breath?

Things will work against her

Like they always do

There is only so much light here

Here within the blue

She is drowning in the misery

Of broken promises and lies

The blue are the tears that came from her

From all her heartfelt cries

She tried to keep them happy

With a little charm and wit

But they flogged her daily

With words so full of shit

Slowly they made her like them

Slowly her heart turned to stone

Because slowly the eels gnawed at her

Through her flesh and bone

Her happiness frustrated them

They couldn’t stand her words

It made them feel insubstantial

She is stupid and absurd

Of course life is not like that

They said day to day

How can you sit and tell us

Those things are bright and gay?

I tell you now, we will make you

See what life is like

That the whole world is a hard place

It will hit you like a spike!

You won’t be happy much longer

Not when we’re done and through with you

You say you should find the positives

We say, you have no clue!

You are stupid and naive

And we’re here to tell the truth

There is nothing so nice about life

Nothing is sweet and smooth!

You stupid little girl

With your stupid sweet ways

We are tired of you seeing things sideways!

We’ll knock you down and you’ll be like us

Off a pedestal

You will hurt like the rest of us

We are taking you to school!

The joy and laughter will leave you

When you come and see the truth

Do your lesson well and we will show you proof!

You can’t have these or this or that

You can’t be happy in mounds of scat

You will eat the shit of life we give you

Down here in the deep blue

You can’t tell me there’s something grateful here

Yes that’s right go and shed your tears

You are learning good, now shut your mouth

Or else we’ll go worse on you and take you to the South!

So Pollyanna is dying, she is leaving me

Pollyanna was once alive, deep inside of me

But they made me see that things aren’t bright

And maybe things one day won’t be alright?

Maybe they’ll stay the same and they won’t change at all

We are in this for the long haul

Can I ever see the light again or am I in too deep?

Will I have the courage, to close my eyes and sleep?

I can’t tell right now at all

Because today I am at a wall

It is blocking my sight to see

I wished I could be free

But I am stuck here in the blue

My only hope is to be fished out by you

Mini book of me.

WARNING – approximately 5k and first draft unrevised, don’t want to revise it; too much to do, did re-read it all to Paul, he says its fine. It’s an honest insight to my personality, thoughts and feelings, though not comprehensive. A lot of explicit details which some viewers erm readers may find shocking! *Shrugs* warned you.

Today’s post is a huge insight to me as a person or at least how I view myself, the good and the bad – why do I want to share this?  Because I think it will answer a lot of questions for the people interested, also a greater understanding why I have been tardy to start my life as well as my creative projects.

It has been mentioned many times before that my start in life was a bumpy one, growing up with a toxic narcissistic and hedonistic parent that isolated me, overfed me and was Munchausen when I was healthy and neglectful when I wasn’t and who destroyed my social life time and time again.

I will not give too many details about what went on in my life before I finally and permanently got away from her, when I was twenty seven – but I think you should know, I underplayed a lot of the things that happened – a lot!  What I have said in the past is enough.

I would say my biggest issue with new people is trust – I have been blackmailed by various people my whole life, that if I sense anyone trying it on with me in the future, even just a little bit, I walk.

Yes, I know other people have emotional baggage too, I understand that and I am loving and caring towards people, but to place their problems on my shoulders then cry about how I don’t care enough, to me is emotional blackmail and I don’t stand for it.  I don’t like anyone making demands of me, if I have not invited them into my life willingly. 

I am tired of taking on people who never considers my thoughts and feelings but always demands I must consider theirs, I have been self-sacrificing for too long and it saddens me.

It saddens me that people want to do this to me time and again, because all I want is to love someone and be loved unconditionally and to care for someone in my own way and to just have a happy life – I need vibrant people, even if they have baggage, they have to be able to rise above it, sigh, take a deep breath and try their hardest to get on with it without burdening others.  This is how I am and I am sure I can’t be the only person out there who can do this?

If you know anything about chakras, you’d understand that my throat chakra is always blocked and I practically live with a sore throat all the time with the amount of stuff I don’t talk about – the amount of stuff I refuse to burden others with.

I have lived with so many energy vampires, I attract them, because of my fake vibrancy (yes I fake it, because I don’t like to zap others) and so I have to become picky about who enters my life in the future.

I am an understanding friend, I will be a pillar of support when you really need me – but ultimately, I am not someone who likes to sit back and wallow.  I am the sort of friend who seeks out the funny side of things, often quite inappropriately and childishly, it is the way I cope.

When I talk fast, apologise a lot with lots and lots of insane giggles, you know I am not coping with the energy around me and I am trying to lighten the atmosphere.

I may even become over the top caring, to the extent I do random acts of stupidity like impulse hugging the person who is sad etc. and then I leave the room and cry in embarrassment about how I acted like a moron in there and can I ever look the person in the face again? as they misunderstood my intention as something that was, you know… a bit too intimate?

I haven’t got out much – seriously I haven’t, I have very little social skills and I am very childish.

When I make friends, I am like a child in kindergarten – what do you do for fun?  What’s your favourite colour?  What’s your favourite food?  Do you have any pets?  I know it’s not normal adult conversation, but that comes easy for me!  These are questions that come to the top of my mind all the while, because these things genuinely interest me about a person!

I do weird new people out, it’s just me…

I like professional conversations or conversations about events that are happening with new people around me, as I can focus on those things and not make a fool of myself, as much.

So, this school is great isn’t it?  Love the fete that’s on right now, what stalls have you been at so far?  Isn’t Mr whatever lovely with the children?  Those conversations make me seem normal.

Some women avoid me because I am quite tall and muscular for a woman.  I am 5ft 8 but I used to weight lift a lot when I was younger and so I have a lot of defined features, basically I look like I shot put; which is a massive contrast to both my bone frame (medically petit) and my sweet fairy face, as some people describe me.

Before I got mono and pneumonia which made me really ill with a permanently bad chest back in 2014 ish, I could carry a man that weighed 248llbs across the room with a bit of struggle, now I struggle to lift Henry two inches off the ground, he is twelve years old and 116llbs and 5ft 3. 

I am hoping to get healthy to manage to lift 250llbs again, I know it will take a couple of years work, but it’s one of my goals.  I have no intention of doing weight lifting professionally nor having very ugly large muscles where I lose my bust, no way, not for me! It’s not ladylike!

But I do know with my muscle mass that it is virtually impossible for my body to weigh less than 180llbs because of the work I did in my youth.  One amazing thing about my body, which I love, is how narrow my waist always seems to remain, I am an hourglass shape and I often get comments about how long my legs are too!

I have big feet, which according to grandma means that babies will cannon ball out of me; I didn’t believe her, until the midwife nearly dropped Henry on his way out!  Now there’s an image for you!

I love the colour of my eyes, though I find them too squinty, but I am kind of proud of them as it shows I have some throwback genes of my four or five great grandpa’s Vietnamese roots, they are also the rare colour green. 

I am self-conscious of my laugh and smile, even though I seem to endlessly giggle – believe me its anxiety, stress and nerves!

I sound like a horse racing commentator when nervous and I often exhaust myself quite quickly when I am stressed out and meeting new people; It takes me a few meets to get comfortable enough to talk freely with a person, but it depends on how nice they are and kind.

I am very body aware and self-conscious because I have certain things about my body I don’t like. 

I have lots of small scars for example, in weird places a sort of small birthmark style thing which makes me self-conscious about showing my back, it’s not big, but I know it’s there; which seems to be inherited as my mum and gran had the same thing. 

I have pigmentation patches on the tops of my legs and lower abdomen (the abdomen patches has faded completely now) which an ex once said he believed wasn’t a pigment problem, he said it was just dirt – so that helps confidence a lot doesn’t it?  I showered daily and he knew it!

I don’t know my own strength a lot of the time, too.  Some people think I deliberately hurt them when I hug them, I don’t, I am just a klutz and accident prone.  I am a nightmare doing the dishes because I have a problem with my left hand; it’s weaker than my right because of tendon issues and I am known to break wine glasses just by holding them. 

My body is unpredictable in that it swells up and goes down in short notice, it’s really weird and significant, I literally wake up fatter or slimmer day to day, I never know what the day is going to be like and often it makes my face swell too!  When my body swells it often makes me look nine months pregnant!  Which is yikes!

We’re relying on a broken NHS system to figure out what’s wrong with me, but they haven’t managed to diagnose why yet.

I hate the inconsistencies and lately I am paranoid about my hair, because I am developing alopecia in a particular place, which makes me have perfect brushed hair like Sandra bullock, but with a fuzzy top like weird brown exotic grass sitting on my head! Thanks long covid!

As a child and teenager I used to have a lisp and stammer that was quite bad, but not as bad as a friend of mine, that is still friends with me to this day because we bonded over our speech impediments.  By the time I was Sixteen my stammer and lisp had completely gone thanks to intense speech therapy – unfortunately in the past two years the stammer is slowly coming back. 

I think it’s because I am out of practise of talking, in all seriousness, my therapist did tell me the more I talk the less I will stammer!

My stammer is annoying as it is worse when I am trying to shout or argue with someone, I can’t be taken seriously, because the stammer just makes a mock of me!

I am talented in doing voices, but still the stammer can come and go whenever it likes.

As for my habits, I only drink to socialise at dinners and parties and limit myself to three alcoholic beverages; yes I am the bore who asks for water or fruit juice. 

I try to drink three glasses of water per day, a chamomile tea and green tea.  I am now only having Pepsi or cherry cola once a week and only one glass, hurray me!  Oh and I love cranberry juice and smoothies.

I don’t smoke and never will. 

I don’t like to sunbathe, bad for the skin and I am a bit of a vampire really… though I love playing in the water, or when I am at beaches I am a big kid digging trenches, playing with the sand and rock pooling or burying the ones I love… all normal here… I say that about beaches, but only been to a beach twice in my life.  I tend to go to the fake beaches that are inland, you know, the lidos and the thingamabobs. 

I am a water baby though, love swimming, get me a pool you will struggle to get me out, also love those diving boards!

I am a bit of a germ-phobic too, I clean my laptop etc. whenever anyone I believe is unsanitary has used it and I am reserved about. 

I don’t have much to talk about except for recent things, because I have so far had a boring life, its best for me to talk about what’s going on immediately in my life and what I plan for it in the future.

I love cooking for people; I like to feed people, but nice food, healthy foods.  It is one of my joys in life, especially if the food it made from scratch by me, like lasagne with all the homemade sauces not canned stuff from a supermarket!

I am easily bored so I am always looking to be doing anything else at any time and I love people who motivate me to do things, like, go for a walk, or anything!  I am happy for change; I easily stagnate when I am around people who do nothing.

I am very modest in what I want from life and people, I like praise but I don’t take it well, it kind of embarrasses me to have people be nice to me and that.  In fact that’s a weird thing about me, whenever people are super kind and nice to me, I tend to need to leave the room and cry because I am not used to it and I don’t know why I am like that!

I am prone to nervous stomach as well, which is a huge embarrassment!  My stomach gets unnecessarily noisy and I can’t control it!  Groan grumble groan, groan, like some moany old man and sometimes, depends on the situation or people I am dealing with – now this is excessive anxiety, usually bought on by having medical procedures or dealing with people who I am afraid of, but I visibly shake and my teeth chatter.  I can’t hide my emotions very well when I am anxious. 

Thankfully, on a general note I tend to be braver than the average person, or so Paul seems to think so!

When people hurt my feelings or are mean to me or shout too much around me and there is a lot of anger in the room, I tend to leave the room and get away from that kind of energy until I think the person has calmed down.  I also try not to speak to them if I bump into them again and leave the ball in their court to speak first, so I don’t screw up; because it’s likely I will start with the inappropriate jokes, usually on the person’s behalf and it can blow up again.

I have the habit of saying “no offense” immediately before or after I have insulted someone, because often I have the habit of saying what I think and then thinking oops, but also I am kind enough to arm a person before a supposed insult ensues.  I don’t really mean to insult people and don’t go out of my way to.  But I have been known to say things like… “No offence, but that was bitchy of you just then” or “No offence, but you are a little behind with the times”.

If a person is an asshole, they’ll know I think that too… just too honest for my own good!

But the thing is… some assholes are actually nice assholes!  What I mean is a certain type of dominant that has gusto, poise and finesse can get away with it if they putting down someone nastier, but not a regular asshole who is an asshole for assholes sake!

I don’t want any trouble, but I will give trouble if it comes my way; I am feisty, like I was raised to be!  Because my past had a lot of violence and abuse in it, it means that threatening me with violence is a dumb idea, because I’ve been there done that, worn the t-shirt got tough and so what is the big deal huh?  You want to hurt me?  You’re going to get some pain too!  Sorry, but I do not back down to bullies, it took me twenty seven years to build that strength, I am not going to be a victim again!

I’ve played with some nasty people over the years and I know all the dirty tricks and I’ve learned over the years that the people likeliest to try and abuse me are all soft pussys who never experienced it themselves and will curl in a ball shouting mama, no sooner had I slapped them back!

People think because I have had an abusive past that I am a victim for the rest of my life, yes some women get destroyed by it and never find their courage, but I am one of these that the more I was abused the thicker my skin got and let’s put it this way… Paul can vouch for the truth in this, I broke my leg and it hurt a lot!  But I didn’t feel I needed the doctor, I didn’t see any protruding bones etc, but I could walk on it and I did for nearly nine months until a doctor accidentally bumped my leg with his chair and I screamed, asked what happened, told them, they sent me for an x-ray and found I was living with a break the whole time! That’s one of the reasons Paul decided to get me away from my family.

That’s how much I’ve had in my life, so much that breaking my leg was nothing to me.

I am not saying this to impress anyone.  I am saying it to put a point across, that I am not going to be abused again, not in a way that is detrimental to me. 

I like dominant self-assured guys who know what they like, I love and admire that.  A guy can dominate a woman without destroying or hurting her.  I have a past in the lifestyle, what is the lifestyle you ask?  I have been an active part of the BDSM community and there are guys out there who are not abusive, but tender, nurturing and protective of their women.  The total opposite to what society thinks the lifestyle is about.

Ironic that my past domestic violent relationship outside of my childhood home was vanilla and was a very religious man to boot – vanilla is what we in the lifestyle call non-BDSM couples!

My mental health and my strength to stand up for myself would never have happened if it weren’t for these wonderful men training me how to overcome it all.

Because I was used to pain, I began to self-harm when I didn’t get regular bouts of pain – weird I know.  I self-harm when I am stressed.  These guys helped me with that; they toned down the punishment I’d do to myself to a safe sane level under their control. 

I can take a lot, so I am pretty fun to play with in the scene.  But don’t get the wrong idea, it’s not abuse, because it is something I have agreed on and no one goes beyond another person limits.  There are safe words and understandings, everything is talked through, and everyone is respected including the submissive!

But I tell you now, it takes a very special person to get me in the lifestyle, because a couple of my exes were amazing men.  I have found it very hard to replace them.

Why am I not with them anymore?  The first one I was jealous of their new submissive as they were polyamorous, the second one went to war and came back mentally unstable and felt for my sake, he should let me go.

I didn’t live with them though.

I feel bad for the first one, because jealousy is no longer an issue for me and I am currently in an open relationship with Paul, where he actively seeks other women – however, Paul is the least dominant person I’ve ever met, despite meeting him in a lifestyle community room.

Paul has been pushing me to find someone else for a long time, someone who will bring out the Empress in me, because Paul thinks I am naturally dominant, but I don’t see it personally.  He thinks I would have been quite a formidable woman had it not have been for my toxic upbringing.

I don’t think he knows me that well.  When I am in love and I respect a man a lot because of their gumption, good manners, and self-certainty and so on, I go weak at the knees and it is Yes Sir all the way! As long as I feel respected and above all cherished like a favourite pet! 

Some of you no doubt are disgusted by all of this, but I don’t care.  It’s me, like it or not.

All I want from life is someone to respect me, look out for me, protect me, guide me, nurture me, help make me the best that I can be by keeping me on track with my goals, motivate me, love me so much it feels unreal.  I want dogs, a herd of goats and guinea pigs, an aquarium, a large garden I can turn into a food forest, some more children and endless amounts of art supplies and a cosy home. 

I am forty now, I don’t know how many kids I can have before I dry up!  But if I become rich due to a lottery or becoming a bestseller, I think I’d have my eggs stored so I don’t miss out on a new family.

The Italian, Irish and Greek blood in me is so strong; I need to be mama to a large brood!  It is something I’ve always wanted, but my relationships have always controlled that.  I love family life, but unfortunately things contrived to leave me virtually without one.  I only really have Paul and Henry now.

All I want to do is share my ideas with the world, my art, and my stories, perhaps start a new weird sub-culture because of my works and see other people play or be inspired by my ideas!  I want to garden, I want to go to dog sport events with my future trained pups and cook good food for good friends.  I’d like to go to the occasional country fair and things like that.  A simple life really, filled with love and passion for everything.

This post is becoming a bit of a novella I suppose; it is very long right now. But I want you to know me more, I don’t know why I want to do this, I have some kind of instinct it’s a good thing to post out there.

But one thing I have problems with is my chronic embarrassment by how I look and talk, smile and laugh.  I don’t want this body, I want a new one.  I like being 5ft 8, I like having green eyes, I like having the narrow waist and the legs that go all the way up, but it’s everything in between I hate.

I hate my big nose, I hate my shape of the face, it’s an inverted triangle, how ugly, makes me look like I have huge jowls and I squint too much!

What I hate more than anything is, I can’t shout, because I stammer and because my voice breaks and screeches like Madeline Kahn from History of the world part 1, I can’t sound composed and mature when I need to shout suddenly.  If I work up to it by thinking about it before shouting, I can sound a bit, sergeant major like, but a sudden shout will be a screech.  So embarrassing!

Anyway not much positive stuff yet I know, but I am getting there.

I know I care very deeply for people who are in my life, whether they are neighbours (except the bad one) or friends or family or mere acquaintances I see often in town.  I don’t ever walk away from a person in need, even a stranger, even if I get into trouble for it from my bosses because I left my post to help a woman who was having a heart attack.

I believe the whole world is a family, we’re all cousins and I don’t like it when people disagree I find it so short sighted.

I always thank people who serve me whether it’s protocol or not!  I don’t care for protocol if it means we forget our manners!

I am the sort of person who’ll wipe the table down at a café or restaurant before anything else and will tip generously if the service was genuinely friendly and nice and sometimes leave a message for their bosses about how lovely the specific and named worker was. 

I can’t walk past homeless people without giving them food or water, unfortunately when I am out with some people they grab me by the arm and move me away from them because they know I am so generous.

I often do the gardening without shoes, which worries Paul a lot.

I have all sorts of weird holistic remedies for people I love, if they need it.  Got a stomach ache?  I have a crystal for that you should hold.  Got a headache?  Rub your head with the nearest pebble and throw it away.  That sort of thing; I eat flowers too, some are edible.

I garden organically and with nature’s aid, got a pest problem?  I will endeavour to encourage pest eaters to the garden!

I like fantasy, sci-fi, dystopian, comedy, animation, non-slash horror, martial art and mafia movies.  I am addicted to vampire movies, Pixar movies, DC and Marvel.

I like reading a lot and there are always around ten to fifteen books on my bedside cabinet!

I like doing oracle readings and tarot readings for people who are close to me.

I can’t drive a car or ride a bicycle, never learned.

I am terrified of horses but will go near them as I like them, but I am too scared to get within touching distance.

I am more of a dog person than a cat person.  I love cats too, though, but I do tend to get sinus problems around them if I am with them too much, same with pug specific dog hair, but I love all animals so I think its worth the suffering!

I don’t know why it’s just pugs, but there you go.

I have an excellent strong sense of smell, which makes me really sensitive to all kinds of odours and I have a strong gag reflex!

I have quite a prominent mustard allergy unfortunately, it makes my spleen swell! I also have issues with eating soy occasionally.

My biggest food problem (as in the foods I love too much) are cream and dairy anything, lamb, kebabs, southern fried chicken, Indian and Chinese food.  I mostly have a Mediterrean mixed Asian diet though.

I have five different personalities that come out from time to time, a masculine me, a kawaii/Lolita loving me, a gothic me, mother of the world me and a jock me. 

I do love sports, despite being fat and unfit.  I’ve been housebound for eight years!

I love watching sports, but I love doing them too.  A major part of my depression has been what I describe as physical boredom.  I love to move my body, but I am not motivated when I live with or am around lazy sedentary people. 

Unfortunately, although Paul walks everywhere, he loves to be immobile most of the time and me being a water dog, I flow with those around me.  So if people are stagnant around me, I stagnate too.

I really do become the energy of the people around me the most.

Before my illness, I loved Tae-bo, netball, Frisbee, swing ball, belly dancing, skipping, rowing machine, power walking, hurdling, swimming, lots of sports.  There is a sport in the UK called rounder’s which is like baseball really, I love that at picnics.

On TV I like to watch gymnastics, rugby, wrestling, horse racing, dog sports and other things.

I am a positive person really, I always see the good in most things, and I have a Pollyanna type problem lol.

When people first get to know me I am very open and honest immediately with little or no reservations after the first few meets, but tend to allow others to lead conversations bore I get comfortable with them.  It puts some people off, making them think I am trying to put them off, but I am not.  I just like to let people know where I stand and set boundaries immediately.  I don’t mean to come across defensive with things like “so why did you want to contact me then”? 

If they happen to start to talk to me online for an example.

I am over excited when people are nice to me too, as it’s a novelty.  Stupid as it sounds.  It takes a lot to bite my tongue about things so I don’t sound weird, but often I just want to blurt out to kind people things like this… “omg you are so sweet, I love you for that”, but I hold back with an “oh wow, or that’s nice”.

My music tastes are jazz, rock and easy listening.  But I like opera and classical music too and weird modern classical like Nox Arcana, I suppose that’s the best way to describe it?  Though saying that, it is dark fantasy or gothic instrumental.

I consider myself in having mostly Jewish ideas, though I am not Jewish.  My ancestors were but not me; my parents raised me to be Christian and Jehovah Witness.  I don’t hold with their beliefs.  I think of myself more of a Noahide/Ben Noach with a lot of spirituality with it, some pagan stuff and Buddhism and I love myth and folklore.  But I do believe in just one god, all other gods from pagan beliefs etc I think were just spirits perhaps angels that got misunderstood or whatnot.

I don’t believe Hell is for humans, I don’t believe in being god fearing, because fear comes from the devil, love comes from god.

My personal addictions are perfume, sparkly things (but I don’t like wearing jewellery casually or wearing makeup) formally though make up and jewellery is essential.  I have a caffeine problem I am overcoming.  I love fleece and faux fur (fake fur) and cotton. 

I love cushion forts and can easily get addicted to video games, I have a huge gaming past and I am trying to curb it these days. Doing well with that actually!

I love war games, Rome Total War and real strategy games.  I am a master of ancient warfare; I was 5^th in the world leader board for the original Rome Total war twenty years ago, for being one of the best generals in the world. 

For a woman I have a lot of weird hobbies and knowledge.

I know how to change a fuse and build a wall and change the water in the car, weird things like that.

My experience of being passed around different relatives as a child, meant I experienced lots of different family lives and I learned that the bigger the family the calmer the environment and easier it is to actually feed them all.  Sounds counterproductive, but it works!  Really less than three children is hard work!  More than five kids is easier!  I know it sounds nuts, but its quieter, because they keep each other amused and there is less sibling rivalry.

Henry is extremely demanding and hard work as he constantly needs attention as an only child. I warned Paul about this, but he didn’t want to risk me getting sicker by having more children.   I can’t force Paul to get me pregnant, so I didn’t have anymore.  He knows I resent this, because he hasn’t respected my choice with my body.  But the thing is, he does want more children.  The other thing is, we are in an open polyamorous relationship, where he is going to be getting another woman pregnant someday and I am sitting there not having another baby.  Which is hard to digest!

I have struggled to have any kind of life outside of everything I have said in all the above paragraphs, because I have been controlled by other people all my life and I have put myself aside for them. I am also trying to boost my confidence to get a life, because I am scared.

I don’t know how to react and socialise in a normal acceptable kind of way. I am ugly and so even when I fake confidence, people call me pretentious and all sorts of horrid names.

The amounts of time I have thought about suicide, just so I can have a fresh start.

I have heard I am getting popular, Paul has told me certain people have told him things. Whether its true or not I don’t know, it could just be his attempt to boost my confidence, but if its true – it’s terrifying me the kinds of attention I am getting.

Why are they so interested in me in a nice way?

I am not that talented, I am just weird, nervous, I live in the clouds and I am ugly, I am fat and honestly… if they showed up I’d hide. I’d probably swear out loud, run away and vomit in a corner somewhere because of the attention. I’m a mess. Or sometimes, as I have been known to do this instead when I am a little more brave, is become too friendly if you get me? Almost desperate like.

I am fascinated and confused by the attention Paul claims I am stirring up in some people. You know I don’t get it, but Paul is getting fan mail. Fan mail? Really?

I haven’t done anything yet!

Nothing significant, this blog is nice, but its underworked and certainly not what I call my best work!

So what’s the big deal?

I don’t get it.

I love you for being interested in me, but I don’t get it.

There is a handful of people, not just one or two and I don’t get it.

I think though, I might not get it, even if I am a bestselling author someday.

I think, it’s all dream and nothing has happened yet!

People contact Paul more than me – I invite you to talk to me directly, either on twitter DM or my email at TheTardyCreative@gmail.com Paul is tired of the questions and the cryptic stuff. I am more than happy to talk in depth with you all.

I can’t think about what else to say about me.  Other than I am so confused. I have been writing this for nearly two hours now and it is 5k long, so I am posting this as a mini book of insight to my personality.  I don’t think it’s full and comprehensive, but it will have to do for now, because my fingers are icy cold and going stiff.

But all I want is love, a few more children, a lot of pets, good food, friends, to be creative and have a lovely forest garden and some health and fitness, is that too much to ask for?

I feel like deleting this and wasting those two hours, but Paul won’t let me.

Happy reading!

Woah what have I done?

I have been keeping very quiet about a certain little underground problem; I say it’s underground because it hasn’t actually directly been aimed at me exactly, only through hearsay.

I have the hearsay of online acquaintances that a certain vlogger has been doing her utmost to try and tarnish my reputation behind the scenes by friending anyone connected to me to get any details about me and to basically, lie about me in parts.  These online acquaintances have warned me she is doing this because of jealousy – I don’t know why, because I have never had a book published whilst she has!

I am embarrassed that this is going on behind my back, because I dislike drama llamas and I don’t engage with gossip and things like that generally, unless it gets too out of hand and it is getting out of hand because I am actually becoming concerned of the reputation of the person doing this. They don’t realise it, but they are killing their reputation with their venomous behaviour and though they are being nasty about me, I am concerned for them!

Their YouTube is slowly experiencing a death, because they prefer the quickness of Tik Tok, but they are using Tik Tok wrong.  In fact dangerously so, because they are spouting discrimination and hatefulness at every turn at a quick fire pace without realising of the consequences that this could have on their own personal lives.

Nobody wants to work with someone who is a poisonous, backstabbing, bully – to put it mildly.  I know these are strong words, but I am saying it how people would see it, if they are watching what she is doing.

She doesn’t realise that this is not a reflection of how professional she claims to be in comparison to other people who seem to be less so – it’s a reflection of her as a person and so far she is not projecting a nice persona that endears people to her – basically shooting herself in the foot in the process, when she desires the opposite effect.

She is struggling to maintain her career as far as I can see, yet, she is doing everything that is counterproductive to try and reclaim it.

This is the danger of fast paced vlogging – people can do quick-fire posts about heated discussions, defame, delete, discriminate, delete, as and when they please and they think they can do this without observers, seeing!

An example of this would be, my son, after hearing the rumors about this person decided he will go and see who she is and what she is saying.  He was horrified when she called me a C— and then deleted that comment twenty minutes later.  Why she has singled me out in particular I have no idea.

I wouldn’t have posted this if it weren’t for one major thing – the personal attack on my mixed ancestry and suggesting it’s fake and that everything about me is fake. Also ageist comments; Personal attacks like this is discrimination – it’s illegal! Don’t claim to know things via presumptions when you don’t know someone, as it will come back to bite you some day! If this continues, I will be forced to take legal action.

But because I am a person who doesn’t like to engage in drama and I like to mind my own business and wish the world luck and love – I am not going to mention their name here… why?  Because they’ve contacted enough people who know me, that the people who have been contacted by her, can already guess who the blazes I am on about.

There is only one mega bully online that is making herself famous by her vitriol of many people, not just me.

I do not like to react quickly to things like this and I have said before, that my blog posts are usually written in first draft only.  But because I don’t want to take the bait, I have edited this post six times over the course of ten days!

No doubt she will shoot herself in the foot again by posting multiple tik tok videos screeching about it whilst also having a certain grace in not naming me directly too.

Why she has decided to single me out is beyond me as we have never engaged in a conversation and we are poles apart in the genres of which we write, she is mostly a sci-fi, thriller author, whereas I am mostly a fantasy, steampunk and horror writer.

Because I am concerned for her career and her reputation, I believe it is time for me to broadcast that what she is doing is not only ruining her own future with what she is doing, but she is also engaging in illegal activity whilst doing so.  Ageism and all forms of discrimination is a crime and she can be taken to court for it, just thought she should know.

People, especially this day and age find all forms of hate grotesque and she is emulating so much venom with every post she is doing, that she is going into very dangerous territory on a personal level.

I fell into the trap of people pleasing because some things she was spreading about me was getting to me; I felt the need to try and prove everything I am doing all the time and I felt that my way of writing was wrong – but there is no right or wrong way to write.

I am not going to prove anything to anyone, because I don’t have the time and the energy to do so – whether they believe I am a writer or not, I don’t care, because I know I am one and I write profusely every day, even if I often forget to update what I am doing online to the world. 

I have a son to take care of, a house, myself, my partner, my pets, my garden, generally having a life as well as reading and writing.  Not sitting back like some young lonely sad creature who wants to bully the world because things aren’t going her way.

It is sad when some people feel that the only way to become famous is to become some kind of motor mouth of poison, of hatred, of shocks and taboo!  It’s really sad that there are people out there who have no pride in themselves that they can do this.

I bring nothing but love to people, because this world is a harsh one.  I love everybody, I wear my heart on my sleeve and I will fight for anybody who needs it; however, I am easily hurt and once I am hurt, I don’t forget, but I do tend to forgive eventually. 

I have so much love to give, it’s a shame she didn’t want to try and contact me to make friends and that she chose this route to reach out to me.

People who know me offline have always said I am a very motherly person who would adopt the world if she could; this has been something that has been said to me, even back in high school – which is why I was once nicknamed “The mother raven” I was a goth, but I loved everyone and tried my best to help the world.

The writing community is a lovely one to be a part of, when things aren’t so vicious. It’s a shame there are people out there who wants to spread evil in the world and damage communities as well as personal confidences.

That is all I am going to say now.  For me, this should end things, though I am sure in some way it may have fuelled the fire in her – but I am not responsible for how she chooses to react to the world and what I say.

However, I am responsible for my own words and actions and I take full responsibility of those words and actions and I wish to no longer engage in this vitriol – because I am not going to become one of these writers who have some stupid historical rival with anybody!

For me, I wish that anyone who engages with this person to remain silent about any more things she has to say about me.  I don’t wish to know.

Thank you for reading!

Books saved me from crime

I haven’t been raised to be who I am, I was raised to be something quite different and I fought against that system heartily because it felt wrong, corrupt and somewhat evil.

I read ferociously, reading was my weapons against self-destruction.

I am glad I took the quiet path and found solace within the pages of books – because the other path would have been a huge detriment to myself, my life, any offspring I had and perhaps a loss of art from my perspective – because the alternative path would have been a life of sordid means and running away from problems, skipping town to town to avoid being tracked by my past abusers and potentially I would have followed one of my older siblings into a life of crime.

Instead the path I took was a weird one, for the type of family I was raised in.

My mother often told me she was disappointed that I appeared to be some kind of flake, some kind of weird little creature who sat in dark corners reading books and seemed alien to what she said was a normal person’s idea of fun!

So what did my mother think was a normal person’s idea of fun?  Going out Friday and Saturday nights drinking themselves into a stupor with your friends, gorging on take aways and BBQs wherever possible and bothering the doctor about your strange back pain, without telling your doctor that you recently fell off a balcony with an 8ft drop because you were too drunk to realise what you were doing!  Oh but that’s not all, pick on the quietest person in your group and make them do things they’d never do without your cajoling and bullying – oh such fun!

Then on Sundays spend all day cleaning the house whilst worshipping God in the form of watching biblical movies in dead silence. 

If it wasn’t for books I would have successfully ran away by the age of fourteen, I knew at that age the only people who’d help me on the street were the bad kind and I was near enough prepared for it because I needed a way out.  I knew from past experiences of other women in my life that once you are in that kind of life, it is hard to get out of it, but I very nearly took that chance.  Thought that maybe I’d earn my way out, but you never do.  The big kick which knocked sense into me was that I had a cousin who had the same notion – only she had the guts to actually do it and came back home in tears, black and blue and with a new found drug addiction only a year older than me, she didn’t know, like I did back then, that it’s not only sex they get you into for money, but drugs too and in order to sell it, you have to take it yourself like a good sales person.

Fifteen years down the line, it killed my cousin. She was murdered when she was clean of drugs for nearly 2yrs as an effort to win her kids back from welfare and stumbled across her old dealer who was desperate for her to buy again! It could have been me, if I chose the same path.

Drugs was a big issue for me, because I saw the damage it did to several of our relatives growing up, drink and drugs are bad, very bad, it changes people heads, make them do stupid things and then they fall apart in tears because they genuinely didn’t meant to ram your head into the wall fifteen times, they were just stressed that’s all!  So I never wanted to experiment or be lead into it.  Several near misses though of people trying to sneak it into me, but I was paranoid around strangers and never accepted food or drink from anyone just in case!

No, after what happened to my cousin I decided to stay as the quiet one of the family, lock myself away in my room because if I didn’t, I’d usually end up the night’s entertainment!

They treated me like a circus freak, something to poke fun out of, to test, experiment with, to scare, to have a laugh with her, see what she’ll do next, like some kind of trained monkey or puppet.

Despite all of this, they still had the audacity to call themselves god fearing Christians!

If it weren’t for books, I wouldn’t have wanted to be a writer.  Because I thought movies were just movies, people playing pretend and they made something good together; it didn’t occur to me until I watched several Stephen King movies with my horror loving grandma that I kept seeing in the credits “written by Stephen King” over and over again in most of the movies I watched.  I knew when I went to markets and charity shops that Stephen King books were everywhere and I decided to collect and read them at the age of 9.

My grandma was very encouraging – another horror fan in the family made her feel less lonely.

I realised at the age of nine most books I liked were movies and that movies very rarely come from other places; I liked movies and I wanted to watch my ideas on the TV or at the cinema.  I wanted the world to visually see what I see in my head or at least adaptions of it.

Books are a love – but mostly I love movies, I am very stimulated by vision and art.  I learn better with visual cues for example – I have mild dyslexia and dyscalculia as well as ADD and Paul thinks ADHD.  If something visually pulls me, I lose concentration on other things because of the interest it holds.  This can be difficult at times because I can zone out on people if I find something visually attractive about the environment around us, fashion, hair, or even a beautiful person – now that one can be awkward!

So, I am really writing in the hope that my books make it to the movies and if they don’t then I have a plan B.  I will give my first book out to publication and if there is no interest from movie producers to make something of it, then I will have to bore myself to tears to learn technology where I can create my own movies online.  How?  I don’t know, but I hope it won’t come to that!

One major type of book that saved me from a life of sex crime etc. was non-fiction psychology.  From the age of 9 I taught myself how to pacify aggressive people without becoming too submissive or self-deprecating, how best to react in violent situations and how to talk to angry people.

Now it works to a certain extent on a vast majority of people and I have been commended in work for excellent customer service and hospitality skills, but there is a small margin where the advice can actually make some people more aggressive with you – my mother is one of those.

If I didn’t emotionally react to her behaviour with me, she’d get absolutely hysterical, come close into my face screaming and then slap me repeatedly about the head, because damn it, she is going to get the reaction she wants because she needs to feel her power over me!  Because she is insecure, that’s all, my fear and tears make her happy, because it verifies to her that she is strong and she is still alpha.

It wasn’t until my mastoid surgery when I was seventeen that she was positively shitting a brick about hitting me, because I have a vulnerable spot at the side of the head would could be lethal if bashed.  So she tried other tactics to hurt me in other ways, usually the legs.

In 2012 it was a book called “Toxic Parents” by Susan Forward that helped me finally tell someone outside of the family and family friend circle about my mother.  They responded in horror, they were a nursery worker for my son Henry.  They got me a nurse and a family support worker to come and speak with me and then the police came to give advice too.  Unfortunately their advice was, get her out of your life or it may affect your ability to care for your son appropriately, meaning that we could take court proceedings to put your son into care until we feel that you are safe!

Because my son did sustain a head injury earlier on that month due to my mother encouraging him to do dangerous things, such as deliberately climbing onto the dining room table to jump off it onto the floor, he was 14 months old and had only been walking seven weeks!

She didn’t want me to have children, you see, it wasn’t part of her plans.  She wanted me to stay home forever and become her nurse when she is old; she told me this over and over as I was growing up.  I accepted it, because it’s what daughters do, but mothers tend to want their daughters to thrive, be independent and happy in their own right too and usually good mothers want their daughters to expand their family, don’t they?

She didn’t.  She didn’t want what she called “more problems” that came in the form of new family members – she didn’t want me to go out alone and make friends, because she liked to micromanage my every waking moment.  It was hard for her to allow me to go into full-time work and she’d often sit in her car all day long outside my work place waiting to see what happens, if I leave early etc.

On some occasions I was ten minutes late in leaving the building because my boss required extra work, my mother would embarrass me by making a visit to the building demanding to know where her daughter is and how they can’t push me around into doing more than my times worth!

I often lost jobs because of her.

Because I knew how she liked to micromanage me and because I wanted to be a good daughter and keep my head down and please her the best I could, until I could convince her to allow me freedom and a family of my own – I decided to talk with her about me becoming self-employed with homework of some description, there was always an issue for her and that never worked.  Because she would become obnoxious when I was on the telephone (up until 2015 I had perfect hearing in the left ear), so keeping those jobs was a task too.

She revelled in telling people about how lazy I was, how she is stuck with a quiet reclusive freak of nature that is eating or starving herself to death periodically and has no enthusiasm for life whatsoever.  Not true, I had no enthusiasm for the life she wanted for me.

I had a lot of ambition until I gave up wanting.

When I was twenty seven I left her to move in with Paul, it was done sneakily but I had to do it that way.  By thirty I had to stop all contact with her, because she is a respected matriarch in the family that meant I had to say goodbye to everyone except for a small handful of relatives on my dad’s side of the family.

She would never know or appreciate that all I ever wanted in my life was for me to be considered a daughter that was good enough to stick around and help as much as I did.  Good enough to trust out alone, good enough to get chores done, good enough to deserve a good husband and family of her own and good enough and trustworthy enough to be humane enough to want to care for her mother if she ever needed it.  I didn’t need to be moulded and abused to do that, but she didn’t understand and I don’t think she really cares.

Because I messaged her in 2014, two years after not speaking to her and I said to her – I am willing to forgive and forget everything about the past, if she is willing to tell the truth to others about how my life was like and repair my reputation in the family and secondly I’d come back into her life if she could allow me to take full charge of my own life because after all I am a woman of thirty now with my own child – she said no, she won’t do that.

I said well just give me permission to live life how I want and I will work it out with the others myself.  No, she said, I won’t do that Tina, because I don’t agree you know what is best for you and as far as I am concerned, you don’t need that permission really, what are you playing at exactly?!

So I said to her – are you telling me then that I have got you wrong?  That you’ve always allowed me to make my own decisions and you never intended to interfere?  No she said – I never said that and you know what Tina, this is the end of the conversation.  I leave the ball in your court, come or go as you please, but I won’t change – I stand by the fact that you haven’t a clue about life and that you are a stupid, stupid girl and as far as I am concerned I wish you never have any more children, you made a stupid mistake when you decided to keep that one! (This was in reference to my Henry who was planned and is very much loved)!

I also wanted to point out, that the message came about because I wanted to tell my mother that I was hospitalised with an ectopic pregnancy and how my plans for a large family could be over and I was feeling suicidal over it – because all I wanted in life was to be a mother of a large brood.

Books have helped me heal from that too… books are magic aren’t they?

Thanks for reading! 

P.S my idea of fun is… picnics or eating out at buffets or country pubs with a large group of family or friends, rowing on a lake, visiting a zoo, playing with dogs, doing messy arts and crafts with kids and playing pretend with my creative and kooky friends, oh and swimming, I love swimming and gardening or being in a beautiful garden that isn’t overlooked! That’s the light side of me… there is a dark side too… What does that part of me like?

Once again friends or family around me, snuggling down with a horror movie – watching thunderstorms, creeping people out, telling a good story, having sex and generally being my weird self!

And guess what!  No drink and drugs for any of that is there? Well, erm, maybe the pub lunch eh?

I cry for you

Life is hard for many

It is made worse by some

Everyone wants peace on Earth

Everyone wants some…

Love and understanding

Acceptance, friendship, peace

Everyone wants the judgement of them to cease

Why is it so hard to learn to love others so?

Why can’t you stop your judgements and learn to let them go?

Why is it so important?

To demand that others change?

When it’s not your life at all, not everyone’s the same!

Why is it those who shout the loudest about life and love and light, who are the ones who shout out hatred and brings to others plight?

It’s a weird sort of tragedy that they do not see

The evil that is in them, because they hate you and me

They try to control us with venom about Hell and pain and more

But they don’t realise their evil words leaves us sore and raw

It’s a kind of irony; they don’t practise what they preach

They are spreading love and kindness, yet they beat us when they teach

It’s a sorry world when they rule us, it’s sorrier when they don’t learn

That every time they beat us, God’s stomach sits and churns

What can he do with his children?

Who sit and think this way?

What can he do about the evil, when they think their words are a good relay?

The more that converts to the words of hate and lies

The more God sits back and hear the innocent cries

It must pain God to see who is right and who is wrong

This is a difficult endeavour, to end this rhyme and song

Because no one will listen

No one really cares

Because everyone has a way of thought, a life to which they swear

But hopefully someday

The world will see a change

Where hypocrisy has ended and people start to care

I’m unhappy here

In a world that’s hard to be

A complete individual, a person that’s truly me

I hide behind a mask

Because I am scared of hate

But hate comes hardest from the lovers, the ones who love to hate

I’m sorry if I hurt you

With my tears and cries

But I have never asked you, to go into a corner and die

Because I am bisexual, because I don’t worship Christ

Because you fear I will burn in Hell if I don’t take your advice

You can’t see this is cruel, you can’t hear your evil words

Because you believe you’re right, to me you sound absurd!

We all find God in our own way, who are you to judge?

I believe God loves us all and doesn’t hold a grudge!

Because if he hates me for who I am – then why did he make me so?

It’s a question I have always asked and nobody really knows

But in the bible God has said he knew us before we were born

So doesn’t that say a lot… why are we as a society so torn?

I can’t answer it, but right now I am sad and deeply forlorn

Because you can’t love me, like a sibling would

Because you judge me so

Don’t you consider you are hurting God as well as me, no?

You pray for me, that I don’t go to Hell

I pray for you as well

Because I see you are blind in your hate for me

I cry deeply in this tragedy

Because hate is evil and you don’t see…

I do believe in God

Do you believe me?

I don’t gaslight, I share my love

I share my tears and woe

I truly do cry for you and the things you do, please know

I cry every night, because you really care

But you still don’t see the evil that you share

My life is very lonely

But with God I have a friend

For he doesn’t judge me as I am what he did intend

I can’t say any more than that

But I do love you despite the spat

Who is the Tardy Creative?

TardyCreative.com was named mainly because I realised that although I am a writer and I aspire to someday becoming a selling artist, I knew that I have other interests which can sometimes absorb me!

Especially interests regarding gardening, reading, pets and other matters close to the heart, such as the LGBTQ community and generally defining myself as a person, healing from abuse and having fun!

I had wanted this blog to become a broad outlook about me, this was never meant to be a professional blog in which I will sell my books, because to me, this is a personal blog.  When I approach an agent with my work in the future, I will create a professional blog separate but connected to this.

This blog was purely intentionally made to share my life with people and my progressions in my life, including my progression as a creative.

I suffered a lot of abuse from controlling people who moulded me into becoming what THEY wanted; this blog was my attempt at showing the world that I am becoming who I want to become!

Unfortunately until this point, I have done so with some sense of shame and embarrassment.

I have not been confident enough in sharing photographs and things in too many depths, but I am learning to change and I am building confidence, slowly but surely!

Any idea that this was meant to be my actual “Professional” blog is wrong, this is a personal blog, and it always has been!

I am fine tuning myself in various ways in my life at a fast pace, because I am determined that my life really will start at forty, like the old adage says it does!

I need it to work, I need it to happen and I need to stop living in fear!

But ultimately, I need to learn to love myself, be happy in my own skin and I am not.  But I am trying my best to change how I see myself and to learn to love the skin I am in!

I am going to be shouting loud and clear about who I am in up and coming posts, but I do not intend to preach and I do not intend to convert, my intentions are to purely and wholly be me, without shame and to share who I am to the world!

Because hardly anyone knows the real me, they just know the trained, tamed version of me that my mother and other abusers have made me into.

The boring me, the monochrome me, the quiet me, the me that is not me… basically.  My shadow is more me than me!

So, as I fearfully crawl out of this rock, learning technology as I go my way, I am also learning not to fear being rejected for who I really am by the world I am creeping into!

Hello, I am The Tardy Creative, my real name is Tina, but that is going to change soon to something that is more me, it is something I have always intentionally wanted to do – change my real name. 

So I will be forty in October, October the 3^rd to be precise and I heard that life begins at forty and I really hope so for me!

I have struggled with two different and very clashing eating disorders in my life, both compulsive eating (when angry, stressed, feeling trapped and bullied) to anorexia and bulimia (when sad, grieving, depressed and sick).  However, when I am relaxed and happy and enjoying life, I have been known to forget to eat because I am in the moment, whether or not that is anorexia or not, I don’t quite know, but it’s a funny thing with me!

I have body dysmorphia, I believe I am really hideous, so I don’t like to share images of myself – I am trying to change my perception of myself, by adding pictures of myself here soon and regularly.  To see whether or not I am as hideous as I think or not! 

Stupid in reflection, because social media is often cruel as it is sometimes kind!

Things most people don’t know about me, is that I am very bisexual or rather pansexual, if I find someone attractive and I get along with them, I will go into a relationship with them, whether man, woman or trans.  I have dated Trans men before and ladies, but I was never open about it.

I am also shy about my own crossdressing forays.  I love to dress as the young dandy of the late eighteenth century but I am also really into Bohemian and kawaii styles too, I am very eclectic and I live each day differently. 

If I could have any magical power I suppose it would be transmogrification, so I can change my looks according to my feelings of the day!

I love to have long hair, but I have alopecia as well as mild trichotillomania (which is triggered when badly stressed or bullied) which is ruining my looks – I have thought about shaving my hair to a very short pixie cut or crew cut and wearing wigs, but I am frightened of doing that, in case of abuse and attack and becoming unattractive to new relationships in my life.

My alopecia is due to malnutrition as I have a digestive disease and pernicious anaemia where I am not able to absorb B vitamins and biotin in particular. 

Despite not wearing makeup much and having a limited wardrobe, I am very fashion conscious and love the fashion industry and watching Vogue on YouTube etc.  I have never been educated in how to use make-up by anyone, except the videos I see online; I am really quite a novice.  I am not confident about knowing what I am doing and this too is something I want to change!

I am not known for wearing dresses, but I am getting into them these days!  I never liked wearing trousers, but I did it because I was told to for so many years, that wearing them became a habit!

I always liked maxi-dresses and skirts and certain styles and colours and up until recently I have been mostly black (influenced as a perfect choice by my mother) and occasionally pink (chosen by Henry and Paul).

I like loud and bright looking clothing and I was told in order to wear bright garish clothing, I need to be a super confident, loud and garish person!  If I am not that, then I will be humiliated by the public and picked on!  So I have avoided it.

This too, will change!

I always felt that nobody is interested in somebody like me, no one wants to hear what someone like me wants to say – but as I am learning more about the social media, the more I have learned that you become who you are, share what you are and you will find your tribe, you will find others like you and the world will become smaller and more inclusive for you as an individual.

Gone are the days of true isolation.

This is why I want to harness using technology and social media, I need to find out for myself that I truly am not alone, that there are people out there just like me, who think like me and like the things I like too – that I am not a weird little thing that needs to be hidden in case it is destroyed by society, like I have always been told I am!

I have the right to exist how I want to exist, so does everybody!  So I am going to fight for it and become exactly who I want to be!

You realise of course I am shitting brick as I am saying this?  Because now I have told this to you all, I have to now actually act upon it… don’t I?

Well, I’ll try…

Thanks for reading!

Mental health experiences

Descent into madness as a trope is something I have written in a couple of my novels, I have always been lured into reading books that have this as a theme and I think it has something to do with personal experience.

I have been there, twice in fact and I have experienced the rollercoaster of having such mental illnesses, so I can identify with certain characters.

I remember being put into such a violent situation so regularly and though I would fight against engaging in any physical conflict with my aggressors, I did succumb once to a violent frenzy that was uncontrollable, my doctor reckons it was my brain going into survival mode as I explained how I experienced the red into black vision as I went into a rage that I can’t explain to anyone what happened during it, only that others were absolutely horrified at what had ensued.

I went through eight months of daily torture, having to share my life with a group of aggressive adolescents because of a day care school I was sent to, a school which ironically was supposed to have helped me heal from my post-traumatic stress experiences of the isolation and abuse I had at home.

I had recently had lifesaving surgery because of an infection that got too close to the brain thanks to the mastoid problems I had, it was literally just two months before the incident I had the operation.

So you can imagine how delicate I was in the head area, so when the group decided to push me over a wall that had a nine foot drop, I went into such a rage that I had no idea what I was doing and a girl nearly got severely hurt because of my actions!

It was surprising for another reason, I couldn’t bend over and care for myself for two years after the surgery and this was within two months of it, yet I could find the strength in me somehow to drag the ringleader girl across the playground and into the girl’s toilets where I nearly drowned her!

There were lots of witnesses who saw the entire thing, including teachers, who knew that I was a good pupil who didn’t like to interact with anything that would cause me problems (I had enough at home and was often sat in the library to get rest), I was shy and insecure and healing from awful surgery from which I nearly died.  They knew I was badly provoked and they supported me through this time and managed to expel this girl, even though she did come off the wrong end that day – this was enough for them to feel that she was never meant to have been around vulnerable children – this school was just a stop gap for her as she had been expelled before.

I’ve experienced such deep depression and loss to the extent I have become anorexic and addicted to exercise to the point of collapse.  I have been there; I have even experienced the loss of two pregnancies, one due to violence and the other as an ectopic pregnancy.

I have been a victim of domestic abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect and rape. 

I know what it feels like to lose control.

When I used to engage with English tutors they would be horrified at the graphicness of my writing, particularly when I used to write horror and thriller more than I do now.  I said to them, you told me that it’s best to write what you know and that shocked them even more.

Some people just can’t believe that one person can have gone through as much as I have; I have even had therapists quit on me, due to the extent they didn’t know how to help me as there was just so much to work on – so much crap in my life!

I have experienced a huge amount of discrimination from ex-boyfriends who don’t believe I have gone through all of these things, because it’s too much.  Paul is different; he understands and has witnessed a few things for himself.

I have only written about four characters with this trope, horror, thriller and dark fantasy.

Usually the character has some kind of background as being a victim of abuse.

I know the feeling of the spiral of hopelessness, that darkness that descends over you and clouds your vision, that experience of losing control of not only your mind but your actions.  Losing such control that no matter how much you really want to talk it through to people, you can’t utter a single word, it is like your mouth has been sewn up and there is nothing you can do.  You can’t move your eyes to look at them, it is as though you have been paralysed.

Yes, I have experienced the total breakdown, where I have well and truly become non-comprimentos, it lasted nearly a year.

The thing is, when you are in that state, you can see and hear what is going on around you, but you can’t respond, it’s like you have been turned into stone.

You can still remember what goes on around you sometimes, but you just can’t react.  I reacted once, finally, when in this… it shocked me too, as well as the people around me… because I wasn’t eating they threatened to put tubes into me to make me eat and on the day they were about to insert the tubes, I came to again.  Fighting against them doing this to me; I don’t know to this day, why it was that which woke me out of that state.  But I spoke them into allowing me have half an orange to see how I go.  They didn’t put the tubes in me.

The problem was my keyworker loss her kindness for me after this, because in her eyes, I must have been pretending all this time – I wasn’t!

Happy reading!

Henry the creative researcher

My Henry is eleven years old and this post is going to be about him.

Henry has wanted to become a chef since he was eight years old, before that he wanted to be a doctor, he still wants to be a chef, but he also wants to be an artist and writer and understands that life as a creative can be hard so he will need to find a more stable job until his creative career takes off.

Henry has a love for learning, particularly culture and history.  Henry knows that his family history is rich and he loves to learn about it all, from the deepest darkest depths that we can find through the assistance of places such as GenesReunited etc.

Learning about family history has prompted Henry to want to write his own novel.  Henry wants to write a novel about the late Edwardian into early Windsor times (if that’s a time period?).  The only thing I am allowed to say about the novel is that it is about two friends who live in the countryside and have a love for trains and is surviving through the throes of the dreaded Spanish flu.

I have no idea what made Henry interested in writing such a book, but I am proud that he is doing it, complete with his own illustrations and is determined to get it published once finished.

He is obsessively learning about life from 1900 to 1925 as this is the era he is writing about.  This is an obsession I can live with, because before that, his obsession was what he calls “The golden era of professional wrestling”.  Now I love wrestling personally, but when my Henry gets an obsession, believe me, it is a total war type obsession!

Henry, working on his novel.

Henry has been telling me how the poorest of poor in those days ate mostly rabbit, he told me this whilst giving awkward glances to our house rabbit Ray, who was quick in thumping his foot at hearing this, which was both spooky, funny and very apt!

Henry’s art is really good and at school most of his house points come from the art class and design technology.  Henry’s school is attached to the performing arts college, so he has been doing a lot of art, dance and drama in this school.

Henry has been noted for having a natural talent for entertainment, but has recently refused an audition for Matilda, down to the fact that since he has been bullied, he is losing his confidence slightly.  He also feels that the jealousy could increase his risk of being bullied, if he were to be successfully accepted in a role.

I have noticed that Henry tends to write and do art more when he has visibly seen me do this in front of him myself – so it is my duty, as his role model, to work when he is around instead of avoiding him like I have done in the past.  Because I personally work better alone, but Henry is influenced by what I do, so as I said in previous posts, I have to get out of my comfort zone and do work, regardless of who is present with me at the time.  I have to work it out for Henry’s sake!

Happy reading everyone!

Defining self update May 2021

Since 2012 I had been trying to learn how to define myself – why?  Because I had such a suppressed, isolated and abused life before that time that I had never developed my true personality, likes and dislikes etc; because I was never allowed to be nurtured as an individual.  I was literally born to become a facsimile of my mother’s dreams and wishes and because her dreams and wishes went against a lot of my own instinctive nature, both of us were very unhappy with the result and neither of us got exactly what we wanted from my existence.

Where it was my nature to sit quietly, drawing, cutting & pasting, playing Barbie dolls and watching cartoons, it was my mother’s nature to force me to listen to pop music, watch top of the pops, worry about fashion, gossip and EastEnders and to try and teach me to give certain people Hell on Earth. 

When I was bullied by other children, it was my nature to ignore them, but confide in my mother and hope that she would try and help to advise me or complain to the parents or head teacher on the rare occasions I went to school; but instead she responded with the concept that I had to play dirty and hit them back or I was considered weak and therefore would only get bullied continuously.  There was a situation with my mother’s close friend, where her two children bullied me and pushed me off my own swing in my own back garden, I ran indoors crying and both my mother and their mother dragged me outside with a broom and told me to hit those kids as hard as I could or else I would get it instead.

Looking back I still can’t believe how both my mother, her friend and her children would sit back and laugh in recollection of that day, especially as I chose not to hit the kids with the broom and instead scarper upstairs as fast as I could and bolted my bedroom door up with my bed to stop any punishment of my supposed cowardice.  I stayed in my bedroom for the rest of the day, because I knew once my dad came home my mum couldn’t continue her plans, as dad had a sweet nature and wouldn’t allow it.  A trick I had learned to use for most of my life – hide till dad gets home.

I had to learn to be partly how she wanted me to be, as long as it didn’t go against my personal morals within reason.  I am glad to say, I have a higher standard of morals than she does.

The amount of times she had tried to train me to be violent, it had worked in some cases, but in others it only taught me how to literally close my emotions off at dangerous situations.  I easily phase out when there is a dangerous violent person around me ranting and raving and throwing things around, I go blank, close down, and become almost robotic.  It is something I have been told I need to alert the doctor about, but I won’t because I feel that they might try to think it would be helpful to keep me switched on.  A lot of people state that switching myself off emotionally during these times can be very dangerous, a sign that I could become a dangerous person, but I am by my very nature, quite passive unless provoked too much!

I just want a quiet life where I am loved, that’s all.  I want happy people who dislike drama and just want to get on in life, not bored, arrogant people who thrive on bullying and drama.  That’s not for me.  I don’t want that kind of attention.  I just want love, peace, getting on with my art, games, gardening and pets.  That’s all.  Boring I guess to a lot of people, but I would be very happy.

I am learning that a lot of things I thought I loved when I lived with my mother are actually things I was taught to love because she liked them.  Since moving away, on every context of my life, I am unrecognisable.  I don’t hold myself the same way anymore and I certainly don’t have the same voice anymore, strange I know, but even my voice has changed a lot!

There are a few things I wanted to be, do and have, when I lived with my mother, that I still want to be, do or have now; but not much of it. 

I still want to be a writer that gets her books published, but I understand that for now, it is best not to get published before Autumn of 2022, for certain personal reasons.

I still regard myself as bisexual, something that I have never been open about to any member of my blood family, due to stigma, my mother has a problem with gay people – she wouldn’t hurt them, but she is ridiculously avoidant of them and I have heard the kinds of things she says behind their backs!  The rest of the family are kind of open to homosexuality, but they are very Catholic too, so it is a stiff subject to rise with them.  Some of those family members will now most definitely know, because I know they read this blog.

Despite being sick, I have always wanted a homestead or a smallholding.  But I have to be realistic with what I can physically do, but I am trying hard to find a way in keeping to this dream, but working around the disabilities too.  I don’t have a big enough property yet, to do it, but I am researching a lot about chickens and food forest permaculture style gardening and that sort of thing.

I used to regard almost shamefully how much of a gamer I am, but these days I am starting to feel a part of a proud community of gamer nerds.  It is becoming cool to be a gamer nerd these days and it is a huge boost to my confidence about admitting to people my love for PC games in particular.

I also used to feel slightly ashamed at being a reader, because in my mother’s side of the family in particular, to be a reader, was regarded as weird as you admitting that you are a lifestyle Klingon who actively understands the whole of the Klingon dictionary!  Actually I know some Klingon words, an ex-online long-distance boyfriend of mine was a lifestyle Klingon who moved to USA and became pretty famous for it… so there you go!

I have always wanted to be a larper too, which is something that Paul has always wanted to be too, so we might do that together someday.

But there is a whole host of other stuff I never knew I liked before recently.  Really strange things that are even starting to raise Paul’s eyebrows in confusion as to…. Why is this interesting?  But I honestly can say, I don’t know why I am finding life of bacteria, soil health and microbiology so fascinating lately; as well as the entire lifecycle and habits of bees.  I also read a lot of books on cosmology and physics and this is puzzling to Paul because I can’t do math, don’t understand any of the maths involved in all of this and therefore only understand the non-mathematical parts of the stuff I am learning.  I have dyscalculia, it is dyslexia for math, and it has been confirmed professionally by the OU.

I have been thinking about joining SkillShare to see if there are videos that would help someone like me learn math to as high as I possibly can despite this problem.  But I won’t be able to afford that for a while, until the debts have been bought down a bit.

I don’t know why I want to learn math, especially as I don’t really plan to do anything with it, other than learn stuff I don’t really need to learn because I won’t have a career in microbiology any time soon.  But it is fun stuff the bits I do understand.

I am very geeky, I admit it.  But there you go.

Another thing my family will not recognise is my eating habits.  I don’t eat like how I used to because of medical reasons.  I can’t eat lactose (dairy) at all unless it is vegan, because my stomach can process it anymore.  I shouldn’t eat gluten (wheat) because it irritates my skin and asthma, but I do slip that in more than I should and I should avoid eating more than 2 eggs a week.  Because all of this can aggravate my problems; my main diet looks like this – 70% vegetables and the rest meat or fruit.  I have less than half a plate of my usual dinner size meal per day, for the whole day.  This is regarding what my mother would expect.  When I lived with my mother it was normal to consume 4500 calories per day – since cutting out a lot of the allergen foods and because of my illness, I can barely manage 1500 calories most days.  I am on high doses of most vitamins and minerals because I can’t process a lot of them.

My mother would think I am starving to death if she saw me eating 1 chicken fillet with a Mediterranean style salad and 2 roast potato halves, which is my usual meal and often only meal of the day.  Because I just can’t physically cope with more than that anymore.  Weirdly, I am just not losing weight, but I am losing inches.

Funnily enough doctors aren’t too worried about this because according to blood tests, my iron is the best levels they’ve ever been my whole life, lately!  I used to have constant anaemia when I lived with my mother and even was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease called pernicious anaemia too.  I have problems with B vitamins or something, which is now worse because of the lack of gluten in my diet, bread is rich in vitamin B, but I can’t have normal bread.

The new me is becoming very different to how I imagined I would be.  A lot of the things I thought were my deepest desires are now considered things I no longer want.  I wanted a large family, but because the cosmos has contrived to make my family as tiny as possible I have gave up fighting for it and no longer want any more children.  I never wanted to live in a rural area, I always wanted to be a suburban homesteader, but now I want to be as rural as I can get, whilst maintaining at least an hours journey from a major British city, London or Manchester.

I never wanted to become vegan, but I have to say, that my body is doing better with a plant based diet than not – though I am not giving up meat anytime soon, just yet.  But I am surprised that my diet is literally 75% plants, whereas before, it was around 20%

I am having a problem with sugar lately and I am finding candies less enjoyable than berries and vegan vanilla ice-cream.

All these are in my opinion are major changes.

I had very little respect for certain types of art and music and now I love them and will even fight for them.

I am becoming so very, very different; it is both exciting and scary!

I am shocked at who I am becoming.

Thank you for reading.