This week started with a delicious gammon joint, home-cooked by my husband. He’s never cooked gammon before but it came out really succulent and full of flavour. He doesn’t want to do it for Sunday roasts anymore but he’s implored me to get an electric knife so we can make our own sandwich filler from now on instead.

“It’s got way more flavour and it’s much more succulent than ham!” he argues. The things I do.

On Monday we had an alternative-to-tagine (and much to my disappointment!) macaroni cheese for dinner, or at least it would have been macaroni cheese but I insisted we call it “pipe cheese” instead. Why? Because the macaroni was as straight as an arrow!

The finely diced chorizo was a wonderful addition, however.

On Tuesday I received a really weird text, one that started off with “DO NOT PANIC!!! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!!”. I have to be honest here, Dear Reader, my anxiety levels are already crazily high because I’ve maaaaybe been getting myself wound up about the news (again). I’m trying (like, really trying) to be rational and to think that this has happened before and the news always hams up possibilities, but it’s me and “what if?” thinking is a known flaw of mine. As a creative brain owner my brain runs away with these thoughts and possibilities sometimes. It’s not a possibility, it’s a probability, and it will be really bad and…

What’s it they say? Strength lies in admitting your weaknesses?

Anyway, back to the story.

Naturally I’m thinking “Don’t panic?! Drill?! Who is this and what’s going on?! I need answers and I need them now!”.

The message talks about not going out anymore and being okay. It mentions “the wolf and the hound” (I’m not even thinking pet names at this point) and it”s signed off very ominously as “BIB”. Perhaps it’s a scam? Perhaps it’s one of those texts that is meant to read like there is a problem so you reply to it and then they know the number is active? Yeah, that’s probably what it is.

So I block the number and delete the message.

Later on Matt mentions that my brother had text him with his new number, and he reads the text to me. It’s different, but the message is crucially the same. That’s when it dawns on me – the wolf and hound. Wolfie and the hound.

Matt and Hugo.

BIB is the abbreviation of the nickname that I gave my taller, younger brother – Big Ickle Bro.

So of course I unblocked the number and text him back.

You daft sod! I deleted the text because I thought it was a scam! What’s going on? How come you won’t be going out anymore?

I won’t bore you with the story, Dear Reader, but the long and short of it is he got invited out, got wasted and left his coat (and therefore his phone) at the bar. Naturally it’s disappeared.

I want to tell him that “that sounds like a you problem” but I resist. I opt for a softer (but no less honest) response instead.

No sympathy here, glad you’re okay though x

Forgive the judgement, but whatever happened to responsibility? The guy is 33 in 15 days time!

A bloody idiot, but perfectly safe. Honestly, the 2 things I say is don’t panic and it’s not a drill and the first thing you do is panic and assume I’m scamming you. Can’t follow orders can you? 😉

Naturally I decide to fight fire with fire. My brother knows of my kinky lifestyle choice, he’s just got no rights in it.

It has been said before 😉

The only thing that should change is the volume of the instructions, he replies.

Ah ah, not today sonny Jim. A girl has boundaries now.

Agree to disagree. Respect is a two-way street 😉

Of course he doesn’t reply. Of course I walk away feeling good about myself. I stood up for myself and he didn’t like it? Oh well.

It’s funny, because not so long ago I said to Matt that I had a feeling my ex was somewhat like my brother, and that sparked a whole debate with Matt joking that I thought about my brother in a romantic light and me getting rather frustrated with such an outlandish insinuation. What I was getting at was that, just like my brother, he believed/s he’s not enough.

I probably would have loved my ex and felt safe around him, maybe, provided he was ready and willing to work on his flaws as well. I do believe in giving people a chance to do better, and to be better. Nobody ever gets it right the first time.

Except for physical violence. Nobody gets another go for that. Ever.

Alas, everytime there was a problem, he ran. The last time he ran, I let him go.

I have changed since us, he was right about that. I’ve put me at the top of my list now – rather than at the bottom – and I thank him for showing me where I was going wrong. I might have respected myself but I wasn’t really loving myself. I do deserve better than that.

But sometimes it’s hard to ‘know’ someone when they’re little more than words on a screen. Sometimes, in order to really get a feel of these people, we need to compare them to the other people we know who also show similar traits. Once I drew that comparison, I knew what I was dealing with:

Sweet, protective, sensitive, but so, so volatile, he’d also rather dismiss or ignore people than have them change his mind. He can get hurt and people are mean to him, but the people he hurts are simply sensitive or don’t understand. He believes respect is his right not an equal right, and you resolve disrespect by disrespecting harder.

See my previous post for how that ends and why I keep these people away.

Incidentally my brother also has a string of failed relationships to him, including ones in which he was accused of abuse.

It’s so, so simple: if you respect women, they will respect you back. If you love and trust women, they will love and trust you back. Sometimes they don’t and that hurts, but sometimes they do, et voila! A strong, happy, loving relationship gets born.

I love my brother to bits, really I do, I just wish that he loved himself. Life is happier when you love yourself, and it gets easier too. When you love yourself then you can give love to others, and when you give love, you get love back. So then you give more love and you get more love back. Karma! It’s crazy, huh?

I don’t mean that sarcastically, I mean that genuinely. It’s crazy how what you give really is what you get: You give sarcasm, you get sarcasm. You give respect, you get respect. You give kindness, you get kindness. You give unconditional love and support, and guess what?

My ex used to call me a pain in the ass, and yeah, maybe I was. He was my pain in the ass too, because while I was showing him where he was going wrong in his life, he was showing me where I was going wrong in mine. I was offended by the term at first, but then if it’s applicable to me then it seems it’s applicable to him too. Once again, all is fair in love and war, right?

I’ve also come to realise this as of late, because I remember him saying on his profile that he was a nice guy and yeah, I bought into it, but then he kinda wasn’t and that got me thinking: sometimes I’m not nice, so then how can I call myself a nice girl?

Simply put, I can’t.

I’m not a nice girl, but I am a fair one, and I’d much rather be fair than ‘nice’. If I tell you, Dear Reader, that I am nice, and sometimes you find that I am not nice, then that also makes me dishonest. If I tell you instead that I am fair, then I am also honest.

… Mostly.

I did use the M word yesterday – no, not that M word. Not the M word that one of my other exes used on a second date, I mean “miss”.

Suppose that I’ve been battling on and surpressing it? A kind of longstanding coping mechanism of mine. If I kept busy, if I kept enjoying life then I wouldn’t feel my less-happy feelings, I could focus on other important, more happier stuff instead.

But surpressed feelings are a bit like pimples, they come to a head eventually.

That pimple popped last night. The show that ensued was just as yucky.

I was annoyed at myself and at the things that I missed because they weren’t even big things but stupid, tiny things that made him… him: his stupid random facts that always made me smile and the devil emojis whenever he was being naughty. I rolled my eyes at it, then smiled because this time I wouldn’t get told off.

Incidentally I know my brother has a love-hate relationship with this stubborn side of me too. I can be right, and he knows I can be right, but that makes him wrong and that’s frustrating for him. Well, kindly, but we know who’s problem that is.

Of course it makes me chuckle, because it’s probably the one expression that my ex wishes he didn’t put into my vocabulary now. I should thank him because it feels great, giving less fucks about everyone else’s problems. I’ve got more time for me, and because I own my shit and get my shit sorted, it feels pretty awesome to be me.

I’m loved, I know I am,

Even if I annoy the crap out of people sometimes.

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Leaving You Smiling…

The Joys Of Womanhood

Just as I was about to shut down for the evening, I had a letter come in on Slowly. Normally I love Slowly and I’ve got some great penpal relationships there, but sometimes things go really, really awry. Usually I find my Asian penpals to be a charming bunch, but today was an exception to that rule. I had a new penpal reach me today and I did feel sorry for him, but that empathy quickly went away for reasons that you will soon see. Enjoy, Dear Reader – I’m off to rinse my eyes out with some soap and water!

PS. Needless to say, I didn’t reply!