And that’s when the writing seemed to dry up, and eventually stop.  Had my muse been bumped off?  Was that miserable wench up the pub looking for another lost soul to inhabit?  Maybe.  I feel ok about her going I think.  She kept me company through some very trying times.   She allowed me to chronicle the slow painful death of my marriage.  She held my hand as I wept and thought I would die.   She enabled me to pour out the contents of my aching soul into the written word.  She was a good friend, as was this blog, and this has been the sweetest, most challenging journey, breaking through my fears and ego and finally writing.

Unfortunately as is the way with a lot of co-dependent relationships…..I don’t need to be here anymore.  It’s time for a fresh start, maybe in a place not haunted by old memories and old souls. I know I will continue to write.  These is nothing on this earth that will ever kill that.  But writing as Girl Lost?  No.  Her time has passed, and I wish her all the best.

For those of you that know me, really know me or know me through this blog, be happy for me.  That is all I ask.

God Bless and take care.

Tash x x x  

P.S.  Muse, if you’re out there, Good luck.

 This shocking reality was recently brought to my attention by the the lovely Larissa in a comment she so kindly left here at this blog.

“Mum just recently put me onto your website and told me how your words help her. I have just finished reading your site and could not understand how she could find comfort in your words. Every post is negative and so morbid. If I consantly wrote such negativity I think I would have topped myself by now. Surely there is something positive in your life, children, friends, family perhaps? Seems very one sided. Is this stuff real or just someone trying to write? Try something positive for a change, you never know, it may open your eyes up to the real world we live in.”

Now I must admit, Larissa did make some good points.  There does seem to have been a fair amount of misery and maudlin round these parts these last few years (????) and I have documented them as openly and genuinely as possible.  It’s not always been easy and at times I’ve wondered if I should just keep my big blog writing mouth shut. ( Don’t worry, that’s never going to happen). I did however think it important to give Larissa’s comment due consideration.  Until that last line. 

Abraham Lincoln once famously said  “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.” 

Larissa, you would be wise to stop and take note, because that’s what you’ve done darling.  Opened your mouth and proved yourself a fool.  Don’t bother wandering by again, not until you can shed that cliché spruiking condescending attitude and find yourself an original thought.  

I write.  It’s what I do, so this blog isn’t someone attempting to write, it is writing.   And as hard as some of the material might be, I have always prided myself on remaining individual and not buckling to the expected norm.  It has also been a conscious decision on my part to keep my family and friends as separate and anonymous from my writing  as is humanly possible.  There is great joy and contentment in my life you see.  That’s the flip side of  the morose and angst.  There’s not one without the other.  That’s reality!

 I apologise if my writing lacks the daily minutiae you ( Larissa ) require to justify your own unfulfilled existence.   If you were hoping to satisfy your voyeuristic fantasies by peeking through someone’s living room curtains, I suggest you buy yourself a Penthouse.  Better yet, plonk yourself down in front of the telly.  I’m sure Home and Away is about to start.

And a word to the wise peeps.  Reality is all about perspective.  I’m sure even Martians on Mars consider themselves to be living in the real world, despite how different it might feel to the rest of the Universe!  Peace out!

 Most people will think your husband is a dick for leaving you.  Clearly you are awesome and only a moron would let such hotness go.  Oh, and he left you for someone hotter.  Hotter and younger.

Interesting Fact Number Two. 

Most people will become eerily silent when you explain that you left him.  Most people will stare off into space, and leave you wondering if now they are wondering if you are the dick….and not him.  Don’t worry, it’s him.

Interesting Fact Number 3.

  Prepare to be a cougar.  According to your friends, bad marriage equals bad sex, and surely post divorce, you must be gagging for it.  Don’t bother trying to pretend you’re just being pleasant to that young guy at the post office  who’s wearing a hoodie and riding a skate board.  You want him.   Bad teenage moustache and all.

Interesting Fact Number 4. 

You will not know how to do stuff.  Change the oil in the car.  Work out what that squeaking, splinking sound is under the bonnet.  Move the refrigerator.  Hook up the washing machine.  All skills requiring a set of testicles.  Which you do not have, despite what your ex might say. 

Interesting Fact Number 5. 

 You will forget stuff.  All the time.  Things that a male brain might remember.  Things like, putting the bins out,  or wrapping up the garden hose so that the giant dog that you somehow inherited in the separation won’t eat it and then require an emergency hoser-ectomy at midnight costing you $3000 and expending every swear word you have ever used and some you just made up!  (Not that I’m bitter or nothing…shut up! )

 Interesting Fact Number 6. 

You are the bad guy.  Half the people you ‘used’ to know, now think this.  They hate you and think you are a selfish, selfish person for wanting to be happy, when the rest of the married world is suffering in silence.

Interesting Fact Number 7. 

You won’t care what they think.

 Where-ever you are in your life.  Be happy.  If you’re not, be somewhere else.  Life is just too damn short otherwise.  Peace out.

I wrote this a little while ago, for someone who I deeply love.  A someone in incredible pain.  I wrote, and then I judged, and then I left it on the shelf.  Upon reflection, it says everything I think I might have felt in their shoes.  Hoping to do someone’s pain justice seems an awful thing to want, but I hope it anyway.

Life goes on you see.  Clocks continue their tick tocking.  Dogs will bark, regardless of tears or shouts or screams.  The phone will ring it’s infernal ring, the caller selling raffle tickets for underprivileged boys ( don’t they know that’s you! ). 

 Water flows from the taps.   Lights can still be switched on.  Here comes the post.  There goes a train.   Was that someone laughing?  Have you seen my shoes?  

How can life go on, when you are stood so very still amongst it?   Don’t they know?  Can’t they see? 

 Where’s my “I’m in fucking pain here!” T-shirt?  Let me pull it on, I shall wear it into town, and all the people will see.  They will know not to smile, to get out of my way, to throw their most sympathetic looks my way.

How does this heart still beat?  These lungs still breathe?  This body is my enemy with its  digestion, mastication, urination, respiration.  You betray me and my hurt, with your infernal living. 

Is this what you will do, now that life has become so hard?  You say not, but I see  it.  You forget I see you, see past you and into you.  You say that you have changed, and I would agree.  You have changed, you’ve gone. 

Elvis has left the building and only the echo of his performance remains.  Do you think an echo will be enough, when the young boys become men?

An echo is nothing, it is a lie.  A lie of a promise, a promise to be, a promise to exist.  An echo is a burden, to be heard but to what purpose?  Like carrying around a dead persons purse, full of old receipts and business cards.  We keep them, but why?  Because to discard and forget is a sin, is a denial of our feelings and thoughts and doings of those we loved. 

 And so to the echo, the echo that sits in our ear, that whispers to us on the cusp of  sleep and wake.  We clutch at it, grasping for its existance, but it is vapour. A willow-the-wisp that twines it’s self through the chambers of our heart, slowly tightening, strangling.

I see you planning this.  I see you, and am powerless.  For the choice is yours.  And your choice has a consequence,  just like mine has.  I set the ball rolling, and you, instead of letting it come to a comfortable stop, will keep on kicking until it is a dead, worn out thing, of no use to anyone.

 Instead, through  mail slot lips she mutters, “You shouldn’t waste your money,” then turns to find the vase.  Words tumble through his smile as he hears her voice, and he hurriedly adds “It’s not a waste, I like buying you nice things…”  She stops and stares now, does this a lot in fact.  Fading off into the abyss, the abyss of cross words and hurtful moments, and years of lacking.  The black that takes her heart, so hurt and eroded, and drops it off, over the edge.  And dropping in the darkness, she grasps that sorrow.  “Don’t forget” she whispers to her falling self. 

 He sees her hesitation, takes it for conflicted,  forges ahead, as ever he does.  Nothing’s changed.  “I want you to remember.”  And the vase in her hand, slammed down hard on the bench now, wonders how it still exists.  “Remember?” she hisses,  and jabbing her finger at the wafting funereal spray, asks “Why would you want me to remember a dead thing?”

  And when his face slips, like a fried egg from a pan, she sees the dance.  The music is the life that has been built around them, the movement are the words they use to move synchronised through it.  She hates this dance.  Is tired of sharing his spotlight.   Still she reels herself back in, placing the vase on the table between them.  “Thank you”, she says, “they are lovely”.  She will say the same next week, each time accepting them and placing them, like a tribute on a headstone.

If you close your eyes, you’re almost there, almost here.  If you close your eyes you can almost feel the earth shift beneath you, the floor buckle and twist.  If you close your eyes, the world can spin within your head.  

Take a step.  Take another.  Reach your fingers and grasp for it, feel it.  Solid beneath your touch, real bones, real skin.  Listen, hear that breath, feel it’s waves across your face.  

Don’t gasp under its touch.  Stay there, still and frozen, as it traces the outline of your face, pressing fingers against closed eye sockets.  Dragging kneading/needing fingers over your lips, smearing a trail of saliva across your face.

Quivering, you can hide it, when those fingers slip beneath your collar, when they tickle around your neck, finding the soft hairs there.  

Be still. Be quiet.  Be all and none and everything. 

Be you. Be her. Be together apart together.

And when your heart beats that cadence, in the loneliness of bed where you lie, like a coffin, it beats not alone.  It is the metronome rhythm that ticks within us all, in time with someone else’s heart, somewhere.

If you close your eyes, you are almost there, almost here, in your heart.

Be careful not to flinch though, for surely love, like a nervous flock of starlings, will take flight and fly…..

What is the meaning of life, and when will I know it? 

 Take a look around.  Life is everywhere and all you have to do is get messy, get cross, be stupid and goofy.  Shout, cry, lie, sigh.  Push it, pray it, miss him, don’t miss her.  Eat, drink, run, wander, get lost, get found.  Get busy, get bored, get on with, get over it, get bent. 

 Think less, feel more, want more, want it all, get it all.  Feel it all, embrace it all. 

Wallow in self pity.   Fly on ego’s wings and be in the moment, this moment always. 

 This is the meaning of life.  So live it.

She eyes them surreptitiously, blinking away dew drop tears that wet her lashes.  A perfect couple.  Her – elegant, lithe and graceful.  Him - ( well she shudders at the thought of him ) tall and broad, with features almost a caricature of big hands and smiles.  His voice, a low rumble over the noise, sinks deep into her bones, and strokes her skin to goose bumps.

She groans quietly to herself, burnt by her own yearning, and twists away from them, pressing her handkerchief tight against her eyes.

 From star bursts in the darkness she sees them still, pressed against  each other. With one hand settled in the small of her back   he reaches with the other  to stroke her lovingly. Grimacing, she shakes him away, an annoying fly, pulling away, and then finally kissing him perfunctorily on the cheek.  She smiles briefly this kissing woman, shaking her head  derisively then returning her gaze to the people around her.   His eyes drop for a moment, his mouth forgetting not to smile, a second behind.

 She’s seen them do this before.  Witnessed him beg for a scrap more of her, seen her dismiss him.  She’s seen how he longs to be loved, seen him cling to the who instead of the what.  

 She dies to be with him, this handkerchief girl.  To soothe his shame, and stroke away his chagrin. 

  Instead, through ragged breath, she watches as the tide of understanding begins to rise back up across his face, thinks she sees him nod to himself, and discretely set his smile back into place.     

 A new game of pretend has begun.  He will retreat now, easing his foot off that pedal, and allow  her to drive.  The cruise control always set at a comfortable speed. 

  A smile returns.  The smile of  “It’s enough, whatever she throws me, it’s enough”

…and the woman, the groaning aching woman, the woman whose heart is reft in two, the woman who dies to feel the press of his hands against her face, wishes she could gouge her eyes out. 

We skate around the issue and drive the point home and slip into something more comfortable. 

Our hearts skip a beat, we shake like a leaf,

We burn with desire, and boil with rage, and our hearts sing with joy. 

We fall apart, fall out, fall for, fall back and get carried away

Don’t hurt me!   Don’t hit me!   Don’t cross me.  Touch me. Soothe me.  See me, see me, see me!

Life is like being poisoned sometimes.  The joy and hate and fear and desire flows along our thready pulse, our hearts fat and laboured. 

It jitters around inside us, setting nerves sparking, blood flushing and settles throbbing in the back of our skull.

Sometimes we shrug, pushing it off like an old unwanted coat. 

Sometimes we slip inside, and hide between the layers.

Concertinaed between here and there, when and where.

Standing in the shadows of  a giant clock hand.  Ticking over, ticking on, tripping up.