Sometimes.....

Sometimes you have to know when it's time to say goodbye!

I have seen friends come and go, some are etched in my mind, a few written on my heart but there are only a couple that have ripped open my soul and changed me forever.

“Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to a new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom. Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon. They stay in our lives for awhile, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.” 
― Flavia Weedn

Accepting that someones time in my life has come to an end has never been one of my strengths. I wonder, after having read the poem below, if it is because I love too easily. I love my friends, my family and my lover all with as much heart, yet in vastly different ways. Has this love-blindness hampered the clairvoyancey of friendship in me?

Reason, Season, or Lifetime

People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
When you figure out which one it is,
you will know what to do for each person.

When someone is in your life for a REASON,
it is usually to meet a need you have expressed.
They have come to assist you through a difficulty;
to provide you with guidance and support;
to aid you physically, emotionally or spiritually.
They may seem like a godsend, and they are.
They are there for the reason you need them to be.

Then, without any wrongdoing on your part or at an inconvenient time,
this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end.
Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away.
Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand.
What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled; their work is done.
The prayer you sent up has been answered and now it is time to move on.

Some people come into your life for a SEASON,
because your turn has come to share, grow or learn.
They bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh.
They may teach you something you have never done.
They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy.
Believe it. It is real. But only for a season.

LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons;
things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation.
Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person,
and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life.
It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.

— Unknown

I once said I didn't think I would ever be as strong as the main character in my favourite book (Brida by Paulo Coelho for those that don't know me). Strong enough to accept that one of her soul mates had fulfilled the reason he had come into her life and that they would likely not see each other again. I'm still not so sure, but I am getting there.

Maybe one day I will find it easier to say goodbye and accept the gift that has been bestowed upon me with grace. Maybe one day it won't feel quite like cutting out my own heart and offering it up on a platter.

In the mean time here are a couple of random verses that don't seem to want to grow up unto fully fledged poems!

Sometimes you meet someone
And they are with you for a season
Never meant to stay forever
Just there for a specific reason.

Sometimes you are mistaken

You are nothing to that someone

Who meant the world to you and more.

Sometimes you search forever

Just to find that special one

Sometimes it takes a while

To realise you were with them all along.

Time to say goodbye.

PS I hope this is the last in what seems like a long line of deep and meaningful's that I will be sharing...at least for a while. I am a member of a fabulous critique group and they are inspiring me to run head long at my ambitions...watch this space as they say!

A spot of Poetry to start the weekend - a post in three parts

Part 1

Working in a library can sometimes be a dangerous way to spend your days if you are a lover of books! There are just way to many distractions.

Inside one such distraction I found this, I hope it makes a smile dance across your lips as it did mine.

Graunt that no Hobgoblins fright me
No hungrie devils rise up and bite me
No Urchins, Elves, or drunkards Ghoasts
Shore me against against walles or posts
O graunt I may no black thing touch
Though many men I love to meet such

By John Day 1604 in Alan Garner - Collected Folk Tales

 Part 2

I have recently fallen in love with the work of Tyler Knott Gregson, one of my tumblr discoveries. He makes poetry seem so effortless, go check him out here. But just for your enjoyment here is one of his pieces as a taster!

You are the morning
and I have waited all night
for your dawn to break.

Daily Haiku on Love by Tyler Knott Gregson

Part 3

A touch of poetry from my own pen:

Close my eyes

That's where you live

Sweet memories of maybe

Is all you could give

Faeries and goblins

May flood my mind

But they can't erase

The visions you left behind

Try as I might

To occupy brain and heart

These visions and memories

Still threaten to tear me apart

The aching that's left

Is hard to bear

While all the time

A facade of 'I don't care'

Image  credit see here

I'll leave you with this....

Is she worth it?

I thought I would share a little about how I sit down to write. Not because I think there is anything useful I can share but so I can be nosy and ask about your process!

Sometimes ideas come to me, usually in the middle of the night, they wake me from my slumber and I have to get up and write it down. These flashes of inspiration  are few and far between, rarities my muse dispenses when she so wishes.

In reality something tends to catch my eye or ear and my mind ponders it for a while. It can be a picture, a quote or even a song and it will capture something in my imagination.

Recently I saw this image and knew it would be one of those images to get the cogs in my mind moving. So a grovel later and the photographer Liam Dagan sent me the image to use. I am grateful that I can borrow the images of super talented people like Liam from time to time just so that I can show you where my mind starts!

Any way here is Liam's image and the snippet that it put in my mind.

To Hell and Back

"Let me get this straight, I'm dead and this is hell?"

"Ahha"

"And i could climb out up that?"

"Yup"

"Anyone ever make it?"

"One"

"Who?"

"One of the original fallen. He fell for a human girl on the living plane, forbidden eve for a fallen so he was condemned to eternity in here. Always looking out with that smallest glimmer of hope to torture him."

"He climbed out to be with her?"

"Yeah, it even worked out for a little bit. Right up until Death caught up with her and they were both consigned to Hell for eternity. Apparently if you ask them they don't care where they are, as long as they are together. Personally I could do without the eternal damnation, but who am I to argue."

"Why don't you climb then?"

"I've nothing worth risking everything for."

"But we are already dead! What could be worse than being dead and stuck in Hell for eternity!"

"Nothing."

"That's my point."

"No, seriously, nothing!! Fall on there, and its not an easy climb, and you'd kill yourself all over again. Only this time you have no body to die, just your soul. You would simply cease to exist at all. Granted some do it just to get away from the torture of being down here, but not many things are worth that!"

"There are a few"

"So, who's yours?"


So what gets your creative juices flowing? Do you get the same impulse to tell a pictures story that I do?

A Cure for Love

There are a number of fantastic ladies I have the privlage of working with, one in particular provides a fantastic service to the people in the community that are unable to make it into the library for books.

Today she showed me this little note, a small post-it stuck to a returned audio book from a 92 year old lady.

"I still have no cure for love"

This made me smile at first, such a cute little note. But then it made me a little sad! I don't think the lady is seriously looking for a cure for love, I think it had more to do with the book that it was stuck to. It just got me to thinking.....

I think better in places like this:

With views like this:

And this:

However I didn't have long, as usual!! Even so my mind kind of drifted to my virtual BFF Deb's medicine cabinet challenge, would a cure for love be something you would want in your medicine cabinet?

When I think of my ideal medicine cabinet it would be more a Narnian wardrobe leading straight to here:

Complete with potions master preferably!

The odd vile of Veritaserum would come in really handy or a little Felix Felicis tucked away for necessity.

Yes love is hard but would I include a cure for love? What instance would you even consider needing a cure for love? 

I have felt all consuming love, I still feel all consuming love. I have loved and then had the object of my love taken from me, yet still I don't think I would want to be cured of that love because it fuels my memory. 

Hmmm, there is unrequited love; the times when you fall so completely for the one person you can't have or that hasn't fallen as far for you. Would you cure yourself of that love? Is this the cure I need to keep tucked at the back of my medicine cabinet along with my liquid luck for emergencies? For times when it hurts and you have to try not to love someone.

But alas, I fear my medicine cabinet will forever be stocked with the staples of nit lotions, spot potions and Calpol (because it mends broken bones). If someone is still looking after 92 years I don't think there is a cure to be had! There are much worse things to be told there is no cure, there are worse things to live with than a heart full of love.

Would you use a cure for love?

Strong Words and Wallpaper

LOVE

 

HATE

These are really strong words. I am sure there are hundreds more but these are the ones that irritate me the most.

Ok maybe I should explain myself a little.

This was one of my Facebook statuses this week:

"I HATE wallpaper. Sorry, I rarely manage to have such an emotive reaction to anything but that stuff I could live my whole life with out having to strip one more wall!!!!!!!!"

I know people that 'hate' everything. If the slightest thing irritates them, if they discover a dislike for something they immediately 'hate' it. My eldest 'Hates' mushrooms yes I use a capital letter here in an attempt to convey the vehemence with which the word is uttered!

Now I don't know about you but I think the words I mentioned above are very strong and emotive. They convey such a depth of feeling and importance that I feel they should be reserved for things that really matter. I don't think I could muster that level of emotion for a food stuff that I happen not to like eating.

However, to be slightly hypocritical, I can and do often state that 'I Love....' chocolate usually! How is it I can bring myself to love something that only causes me problems? How can I bring my self to love a few random words strung together in a blog post written by someone I have never met? I don't know but this depth of positive emotion comes easily to me, it makes me lighter, it helps me to spring through life. Hate makes me feel heavy, like I am trying to wade through mud. But then I guess that my status was appropriate; stripping wallpaper is like wadding through mud, the thought of having to do it makes me heavy. As I stripped, I cursed whoever invented the infernal wall covering, I got frustrated with the tiny little scraps that refused to surrender their grip on the wall and then I cursed the pieces I had managed to remove for sticking to me!

Then, oh no! I carried on, status two:

"I hate home improvements!! Wow the list of things I hate just keeps growing! It like eating Pringles, once you start you just can't stop :-/"

Oh, I am becoming the thing that irritates me; I mean seriously do I 'hate' home improvements or do I just dislike the time and mess involved in making them happen?? Once the negative emotion takes hold of you it just drags you down and keeps you there. Pretty soon everything starts to get tainted. I think I will keep loving as much as I can just to keep the darkness away, to quote Michael Jackson: 'I'm a lover not a fighter'

But I still hate wallpaper!

Motivation: Day 24 Love

We have all felt it, that swell in your heart, the lump in your throat, the tell  tale signs of Love. Sometimes I think I love too much, but that is a different and much longer post full of psychoanalysis that I am just not up for at this hour!

I remembered today how when I was young people got teased for 'luuurving' someone. A little older and the all consuming love of each high school crush, graffitied across our books and bags as a badge of honour.

It is not until later in life that we develop an appreciation that Love comes in may different forms. Parental love; proud and protective.
Romantic love; consuming and powerful.
Sibling love; being there no matter what happens.
These forms of love are not chosen, but the love shared between friends is a different beast all together. It is not as all consuming as that for a lover, nor as unbreakable as the love we have for our family, yet sometimes just sometimes it is perfect and fulfilling.

Today I spotted this picture floating around on Facebook and had to share it with you all, it describes love for me perfectly; be it between lover, a parent and child or between two friends.

Love to all my blogging friends, you have all shown time and again that you are willing to give up your time and energy to help out those in this little corner of the virtual world to ease the pain of another or help motivate someone to a goal. The fact that you can do this for people you haven't meant is an inspiration to me. Today my motivation and my smile are thanks to my inspiration; Deb over at Kicking Corners. A wonderful person, who I am privileged to call friend, even though we have never met. Thank you!

 

 

Motivation: Day 16 Happy Anniversary

My Other Half

They said we were young, we wouldn't last

But that is all in the distant past

Memories of the drives we used to take

Or sitting talking until really late

Still strong in my mind as if only yesterday

Brought fresh by hearing the music we used to play

One summer while football did play

"So go on the will you?" was all you had to say

To make me the happiest girl in town

Now I could officially plan my gown

Five more years I had to wait

To carve in my memory a most special date

Promises we made that wonderful day

The sunshine and the golden hay

I still remember the smiles and tears

A life with you to span the years

Our share of highs, just a few lows

Life isn't all frills and bows

Two became four, we were complete

Smiles and joy, even with no sleep

I wouldn't change a single part of us

Even if we now drive a bus

Father, lover, washer-uper, but above all else

My all, my everything, my one best friend.

Happy Anniversary, thanks for the last nine years of marriage and the other seven before we made it official. All my Love, Always. Sleepy Joe xxx

Weekend Wonder - tying the knot

In the words of frazzled & frumpy epic fail!!!

You would think that being involved in a very beautiful wedding of a close family member would give me no end of creative inspiration, yet I sit here and struggle to come up with anything to write. Maybe it is exhaustion befuddling my brain, or possibly the tired and achy bones (from all my 'fantastic' dance moves - yes that was sarcastic!) distracting me. Anyway, what ever it is I am stuck, how exactly do you describe the privilege of being involved in someones fairy tale wedding?

The ceremony was beautiful, my girls were gorgeous (as bridesmaids) and the bride and groom looked radiant and happy all day! So instead of trying, and failing, to put the day into words I thought I would share with you two things; firstly the poem that I was asked to recite during the ceremony and secondly the short verse I wrote for the happy couple. I hope you enjoy them both.

I will be here - Steven Curtis Chapman

If in the morning when you wake,

If the sun does not appear,

I will be here.

If in the dark we lose sight of love,

Hold my hand and have no fear,

I will be here.

I will be here,

When you feel like being quiet.

When you need to speak your mind I will listen.

Through the winning, losing and trying we'll be together,

And I will be here.

If in the morning when you wake,

If the future is unclear,

I will be here.

As sure as the seasons were made for change,

Our lifetimes were made for years,

I will be here

I will be here,

And you can cry on my shoulder,

When the mirror tells us we're older.

I will hold you, to watch you grow in beauty,

And tell you all the things you are to me.

We'll be together and I will be here.

I will be true to the promises I've made.

To you and to the one who gave you to me.

I will be here.

view original here

Wedding Day

Your wedding like a bright spring day

Love and promise the only words to say

As the year knows more than spring

Married life continues beyond the ring

Many long summers for you I wish

Savour this day and your first married kiss.

PS: I wrote recently about my first love for a project Tangled Lou is cooking up. Apparently all will be revealed on Tuesday and I for one and looking forward to seeing what she has been cooking up. Head on over and take a look.

One Love First Love

Over at Periphery Tangled Lou has been asking for us to blog about our first love, so I thought I would give you an extra little treat with a mid week post. I know I should be writing, or at the very least researching my work in progress, but I am easily distracted!

I have posted a few times about love here or here and given that both mentioned my husband, who is also my first and only love, I guess they apply here too.

Meeting my other half was not the happiest time of my life. I was 8, my father was ill and we had just moved to a bungalow because of his mobility issues, which also meant having to give our dog, Suzy, away. Another family moved into the house opposite us about a month after we moved onto the street.

A family of six; Mother, Father, two boys and two girls. I had a new friend in the youngest child (eventually my sister in law) and quite frankly the boys were just annoying! As time went on, after my Fathers passing,  our mothers became friends and we started spending time at their house. It turns out that the oldest boy wasn't actually that bad! We spent time watching telly in his bedroom and generally hanging out.

Eventually teenage years hit and one evening on a stolen moment, without parental units around, he kissed me. Time stood still, I had dreamed of this moment for what seemed like an eternity and now his lips were on mine. It was a nervous kiss and probably shorter than it felt, but I will always remember how he smelt, the arm of the sofa that I was perching on at the time and how my heart felt like it was about to leap out of my chest.

Our relationship didn't get off the ground for some time. To cut a very long and involved story short he is 4 and a half years older than me, which at 14 and 19 seems like a huge gap. For me there was a couple of two week relationships thrown into the gaps created by our flings but eventually we took the plunge and made what we had public, never looking back.

A full and beautiful sixteen years later I still remember standing in the kitchen waiting for him to get home from work just to catch a glimpse, heart pounding. I still remember the taste of that first kiss.

Feel the love

I have been so moved today by the love drifting around in the blogy world that I had to share it with you.

We all know what it is like to feel so overwhelmed by life that before you realise it that little bit of 'me time' has disappeared.

Over at Periphery there is a mission under way. Following her links to four under 4 (plus two) I was in awe of a fellow blogger and her honesty. I have joined the mission and commented on her post, offering my two pennith of support for a busy lady trying find time to write. Join the mission too, head on over, you won't be disappointed, I certainly wasn't! I have a nice new blog to follow to boot :-D

Share the love!

lucky heart found here

Love is...

Love is the warmth of summer haze

Or the freshness of crisp winter days

Love is that feeling of butterflies

Whenever you look deep in their eyes

Love is concern when the other is hurt

Or compliments that you look good in that shirt

Love is never feeling sad or alone

Wherever you are that's my home

Love is the passion that spurs you on

Or like the comfy PJ's you love to don

Love is only seeing you

Whilst all about rush on through

Love is the blessings we feel every day

Knowing you are my all, my way

Love is everything we are to each other

Mother, Father, Sibling, Lover

What is Love to you?

It's all in the heart

Today I had a rare afternoon just me and the hubby and it got me to thinking about love and the natural beauty of it.

In Lauren Kate's blog (http://laurenkatebooks.net/blog)  she has been focusing on 'a daily dash of romance' in the run up to her new book being available to buy (Fallen in Love) - I have to say I can't wait for it to be available in the UK. Any way, in her blog on Wednesday she was talking about favourite romantic paintings, I have been wracking my brain, and google, ever since to see what I can find but nothing is really striking that cord with me. I think this probably says more about my limited knowledge and complete inexperience more than anything else, but I always seem to get stuck on Monet. His paintings are so captivating and serene, but not much romance! It seems I am in need of a few trips to art museums to further educate myself!!

My afternoon, however, reminded me that romance and love are in the moment and sometimes it is just hard to capture this any where but in the heart. However that doesn't stop us from trying, providing some fantastic pieces of art, literary works and music... all the things I love in life!!!

I sit here and wonder why

While the world passes by

Finding it hard to understand

The reason we are hand in hand

When all around are busy as a bee

You are the only one I see

You are the one that completes my soul

Without you I wouldn't be whole

I still don't get it, it's lost on me

Why out of everyone you chose me

Am I your missing puzzle piece

It's what I wish for in my dreams.



Episode 2

Why is it the things you think you will remember from your school days are the things you don't end up remembering at all. I have been trying all day to remember the things that happened at school, all I have come up with are the few teachers that put the time in and were an influence on me, even if I didn't know it at the time!! The friends I spent time with, but for some ridiculous reason or another didn't keep in touch with! The numerous crushes I had, that came to nothing. But mostly I remember the start of my relationship with Paul.
I remember the excited feeling I'd get just before we were due to meet, they way we would sit and talk for hours about not very much at all and the undeniable feeling that this was forever. He was the man I was going to marry! Some people criticise YA novels such as the Twilight series, for the way the idealise fatalistic relationships. The idea that teaching our teenagers that love can be all consuming is not healthy seems to me to be very tunnel visioned. Sometimes it does happen like that, I fell in love with Paul and I knew then that it would be forever. Should I have made more of an effort to keep my connection with friends? May be. Would I change anything in my life? No! I still love my Husband, with all I am, 15 years in and I have two beautiful girls to boot, how can that be seen as unhealthy??