Although no Sylvia Plath, I have had my fair share of 'daddy' issues, which although now resolved, have, in retrospect, led me into the arms of most of the innumerable lovers mentioned above. There is certainly more than a healthy dollop of hero worship which still occurs here, but what little girl doesn't love her daddy? My mother, bless her hippy heart, unknowingly bears the brunt of my resentment for mistakes made along the way - a current self-development in progress... My girlfriends are my saviours. The countless bottles of wine, the endless boxes of tissues, the gritty, gut-wrenchingly honest assessments of men and work and children and family that hurt and feel good and heal and expand me. Without these conversations I would not be here now, I would still be on the kitchen or bedroom floor unable to move due to a broken heart.
As a teenager I religiously kept a diary - it was pink and smelt like bubble gum, too great a contradiction to the content staining it's pages to articulate here - and when the guilt of my adolescent 'sins' became too much to bear, I burnt it in an attempt to remove myself from them. As I sit here now typing my first ever blog, that time really is a distant memory. My babies are sleeping soundly in the surrounding rooms and the love-heart shaped ice cubes have melted in my second vodka soda (I'm normally a wine drinker but have just come home from an overseas holiday to an empty cellar). My current husband sits in a golf course restaurant on the other side of the ocean hosting a trivia night for a group of 50-somethings. The fact that he's in a foreign country and I am in Australia is a blog entry all of it's own and will be explained at a later date no doubt... The cigarettes I don't smoke - I know darling I can smell it too, Joe from next door was talking to me over the fence and had a smelly cigarette in his hand - are serenading me with their vodka soaked dulcet tones, so I am going to retire to the moonlight of my back garden and inhale one final time before I put the uniforms in the dryer for tomorrow's school run. My words so far are an attempt at an introduction to my life and I'm excited about delving into the dust covered story book and putting my tale into cyber space. I hope any narcissistic self indulgence (which I will try in earnest to avoid) will be forgiven and my tales of past and present will provide a smile and a few raised eyebrows for some, while for me, become a record I can't burn. Thanks to my girls (you know who you are) for encouraging me to do this. x
