I am just Work in Progress: Live with it!

Good moaning world!  So,we're here again then.  We've survived another night.  The trees are where we left them, the weather continues to keep us guessing and sleepy postings are beginning to appear on Facebook.  Some tell tales of snugly Sunday mornings; others tell tales of feeling fragile and yet others the postings of the games we play.   I confess: I belong most definitely to the latter category!!!  I do, sometimes, find it hard to believe that a growed up womkin like me can spend so much time playing silly games on the computer. 

I talked to Helen about it at our last session and think I have kinda come up with a sort of answer.  Games like Mafia Wars, Farmville, Cafe World etc etc are distraction tools I have decided.  Speaking personally, they distract me from my pain whilst my meds are kicking in; they distract me from the things I cannot control (no matter how much I wish to!) and, somewhat weirdly, the processes to play the game help me manage my more negative thoughts. 

My distraction of choice is Mafia Wars.  Yes, I hear you at the back there - what's an unreconstituted hippy, who claims to be a raging pacifist, and signs herself Love and Peace, doing playing a blood thirsty game all about killing and maiming and domination?  I ask myself that question frequently.  I acknowledge that I do not have all the answers to my questions.  This acknowledgement of course means that I can quite happily confess that I also do not have answers to all the questions raised by the rest of the world.  I am just egotistical enough though to think I do!

Anyroadup, so I thought about my addiction to Mafia Wars in some depth.  What was it about the game that hooked me?  How was it I could spend hours playing it to the detriment of my chores?  My first conclusion was the sheer bloody daftness of the whole thing.  Not so much tongue in cheek but an entire limb in cheek.  The daft weapons; the silly pursuits and the wonderfully stupid names the players give to themselves.  My own game name is Purple Orchid - an effort to inject some class methinks.  The ridiculous pleasure that you get from achieving the next level with rewards to boost your armoury such as exploding eggs, or, bloody thirsty roe deer, or items of clothing.  All of which carry with them added power to the player of defence and attack skills.  What? You are supposed to be an intelligent woman for goodness sakes!   

It is addictive is my first defence.  My second defence is that whilst I am trying to think strategically within the game and become a really powerful gang boss, I am not focusing on my pain and eventually when the meds kick in I can begin to function physically.  Third defence?  Struggled a bit with that one.  (Have you noticed ,by the way, that I tend to think in threes?)  I conclude that I cannot resist seeing what the incredible imaginations of the producers of the game come up with next!  There are times when I DO laugh out loud at the next generation of inventiveness they offer to us addicts.  I do hope that the developers are being well paid for their efforts.  I am always astonished at the seriousness with which some people play.  I have considered deleting it, the game that is, but you know what?  I don't think I will.  Eventually I will become bored with the uselessness of it all, like some of the other games I started and abandoned, but in the meantime I will use it to help me manage.  Until such time as something else attracts my butterfly mind.

Yesterday I received a long awaited e-mail from my Own True Love.  For such a long time we have been in a cyber void whilst he attended to serious domestic matters and in his absence I prayed that all would be well for him and his loved ones.  We occupy a space in the ether and will, if I think pragmatically, never meet again.  This is no self pitying wail from a wizened old woman.  It is simply the acceptance of what will be will be.   Relationships are a most peculiar puzzle to the average hooman bean. 

The driving force to be connected to a mate is still linked to the primitive need to bond for survival of the species and can encourage less aware souls to make the most disastrous choices!  I admit to being a less aware soul in romantic affairs, with the exception of one relationship.  That one connection aside, I have made mate choices not for the purposes of breeding (although the one who helped me produce my Beloved Son and Heir did provide the basic DNA for a wonderful physical specimen of manhood).  I tended to be attracted to broken people who needed mending; weaker specimens who needed looking after and who, in my arrogance, I thought I would help.  Oh does Mother Nature have a way of putting you in your place!!!

My focus these days is no longer on the physical need to have a companion.  Actually that's not strictly accurate.  My soul is satisfied with the reconnection with my Own True Love:  it is as if the last 40 years did not interrupt.  The links between us have survived the intervention of four decades at all levels and I freely confess to being grateful for this.  It is testament to the strength and reality of our original love and validates my memories. 

I am now physically alone, by choice, my own choice and am happy with that choice.  I made a mistake and having 'made my bed and laid on it' as they say oop North I discovered I was afraid of not being cared for in my ill health and weaknesses.   It is difficult for those who care for people to be saintly and I have never demanded saintliness in any of my relationships.  (Difficult to demand saintliness in others when you are a sinner of the first order!)  However, when the person who purports to love you and gets cross with you when you insist on being independent encouraging you to seek assistance, sighs loudly, swears and delays at the first request ....  you learn to stop asking.  I don't blame the Estranged One, really I do not.  If anyone carries the blame for the breakdown of my second marriage it is me.  My need to nurture overcame my sense of self preservation and I silently apologise to him for that.  He will not communicate with me so I cannot tell him in spoken words.

It is now no longer necessary for me to seek a physical mate,   Pragmatism is a useful foil to thwart the WorryWorm with.  Oh of course I struggle to lift things: I struggle to work and I know my health will continue to deteriorate.  In some ways this frees me from pursuing a romantic relationship with anyone other than my Cyber Lover.  Can you imagine the scene?   Even if I were brave enough to share my skinny frame intimately again, how long before the potential lover would become bored at the list of things I could not do because of my various afflictions?! 

I never realised that pretending could actually work in your favour.  I can find strategies to deal with physical assistance:  I have good loving friends who recognise that I am actually not very good at asking for help;  eventually the State will recognise that I am officially disabled and assist me and my Beloved Son and Heir has made a sacred promise NOT to put me in a home. 

I hope my Cyber Lover, if he has managed to read this, does not feel devalued by what I have written.  He should be flattered that at last, I need no substitute for him.  I live with my dreams of our reconciliation, I eagerly check my e-mail for his sporadic missives and silently squeal with delight when one arrives.  Of course I long to be enveloped by him again and all that would ensue but for now I am satisfied that he is alive (when I thought he was dead); I am content that he is loved and has thrived and wish only happiness for him.  If the Gods are kind they will reunite us.  We used to joke with each other that we would perambulate along Eastborne or Hastings in our dotage with matching walking frames and be happily in our own little world needing no other.  In some ways we have achieved, with the aid of technology we could not have dreamt of forty years ago, our very own space in the ether that no-one else can share.

Right my darlings!  Nuff of the self indulgence!! Time to address my chores and my responsibilities.  As I slowly mutate back to being an owl from many years of having to be a lark I find that my days are being somewhat truncated.  I am sure that eventually my internal clock will adjust and I will revert to at least attempting to be productive.

Take care of each other, be gentle with yourself
Love and Peace
THE Purple Fairy xxx