Commemorating a decade of blogging here

As I sit and type this I am listening to President Ramaphosa on the radio, something that was unheard of 10 years ago…

10 years!

3 different teaching posts, being a boarding mistress, chaperoning an international dream tour around Europe, becoming an internationally recognised playwright, publishing a book, starting an anthology, another novel and a psychology-vibe book, finally, after 15 years trying, being able to conduct a training session for school teachers that was incredibly successful, pushing on through chronic fatigue, the passing of my God-mother and sister’s best friend, through the trauma of driving a barely working car to paying off another one, to COVID 19 and the insanity of the isolation and hardships of the last 18 months, with riots and civil unrest thrown in the mix… it has certainly been a severely challenging decade for me! And I lean in to rest in the peace and serenity, stillness and love OF My Father in Heaven as the world around me spins out of control with climate change, countries at war, glass ceilings and countries where women still have no rights, where animal extinction is still on the cards and religious conflict continues to defy the laws on which it claims to base its fight…

I sit in hope, hope that the decades ahead will help me feel safer, more secure in myself, more accepting of who I am, and still hoping that the dreams of training, presenting, writing, publishing, performing again in a recording studio, of having my own garden to tend, of being secure, of finding a job where my colleagues are striving to goals, in love, with vision too, and where I get to see my dear friends so much more.

This decade of blogging has truly held a great deal, may the decade ahead hold more in love, joy and smiles than the one past.

Thanks for your support and reading my story – a touch of cyber support that goes a long way!

Stay blessed and loved

Shannan

Shy Girls’ stages for living through unrequited love

Ok, so you are a well-behaved girl, priorities in place, very little experience in the world of ‘love’ or ‘loving someone’ and with hardly any, if any, examples of unconditionally loving relationships to gauge anything by. This guy arrives on the scene, you think he may be interested, but you can’t be sure. You don’t really feel either way, you’re so busy getting on with the hell that your life has morphed into… then you kind of subconsciously notice odd things, like a comment he makes about something which would mean that 1) he remembered something and 2) he was actually paying attention to what you did or said… it is odd, no one ever pays attention to you or what you do or say, why would they? (Especially if you come from a loud family and have trained yourself to just keep quiet because you really don’t need to add to the hot air noise of others trying to ‘be better’ than others…)

Nevertheless, it would appear that this male who entered your workspace, hobby-space, friends’-space or whatever space appears to have awoken a reaction out of you and naturally, you discard it, because it is so weird and unfamiliar, that it would just take up too much brain space to try and figure out exactly what is going on here. Back to surviving the hell of your own life – naturally survival is the priority – not odd senses. Then, he goes out of his way to help you, notices that you did something when no-one else did, again, it’s odd. So you put it down to making things up in your head. BUT – If you were to imagine a guy liking a girl, because you have to imagine, because you’ve never experienced it – except through all those teenage love novels, which kind of gave you an idea, along with dozens of Walt Disney movies … yes, it would kind of look like this: he cares, he listens, he remembers, he observes, he helps, yes, it would be like those moments… but of course the guy doing the actions likes someone else, and has said so, so it makes it all VERY confusing. Back to survival.

BUT – the mind wanders … a nasty habit indeed … You know he is taken from what you have heard, and other comments made, but the attention you receive is definitely different to what other female interactions with him seem to appear to be.

Then you are doing something and you know that he is watching and you don’t know what to do about it, so you ignore it. He likes someone else, you are making it up in your imagination. Then you are in his line of sight, focusing on something else, but look up in time to see him get near whiplash moving his eyes away from you… and it’s like, running through your mind – did I just make this up? Am I seeing things? I must be, because he likes someone else and I’m not someone that anyone stares at… and if he was naturally being friendly, he would have smiled… maybe my eyebrows have grown skew, or my face doesn’t fit in again… who knows… but you do hope that his neck is ok, if your first instinct was right…

Anyway, this all goes on for a few weeks, or a couple of months – time morphs oddly through hell and love – nothing happens, because he never asks, and he gets shyer and shyer and eventually avoids you, and somewhere amidst all this frustration and confusion and morphed time, (purely because you have no idea or experience in any of this ‘love’ mumbo jumbo that apparently originated with birds and bees) THAT moment happens. How insects could possibly be connected to humans, who knows. Anyway – out of nowhere – literally – at a Christmas function, or watching a show together, or hot-seating desks next to each other, or bumping into one another at the coffee machine – BAM it HITS! – the “Oh Shit” moment – THAT moment – the moment mother’s lines “I heaved you from these loins” makes a whole lot of sense in both the heaving and the path to childbirth. Pulse increases, yearning and throbbing and pulsating and everything just goes, yes, yes, yes, I want to wake up next to you for the rest of my life, even if it’s in a hospital or I’m in charge of giving you your meds – BAM – THAT MOMENT when you enter the hell of unrequited love {like the hell of your ‘normal’ life already wasn’t enough}. What do you do with THAT moment? How the heck do you explain THAT MOMENT? How do you live through and out of THAT MOMENT? With seriously mother-flipping difficulty – that’s how – it sucks … everything after THAT moment just sucks piles.

He leaves the company, hobby or whatever to be with the girl he was after all along – not you… if you mention all that he did and said and the information you gathered, in your desperation to make sure you weren’t making it up, or going insane, he will tell you that you are psycho… even if it is in a polite “just please don’t contact me again” kind of way… alternatively, you don’t say a word, and still, he doesn’t contact you again after leaving… it turns out that the long, deep, meaningful conversations you had BEFORE the “Oh Shit” moment – were actually only meaningful to you – he only, by some alien infestation in his brain for one moment in the entire expanse of time, remembered what you said or did for the one sentence, that was it. Sorry.

So he’s gone. You’re alone. Everything REPLAYS over and over and over again. Cheers to sleep, cheers to sanity (which you ironically DID HAVE before this nincompoop arrived in your life), cheers to ever believing in yourself again, cheers to trusting yourself (and sadly, sometimes your Higher Power too) and cheers to all the love and joy and dream-chasing, whole woman you were before you ached, you longed, you felt you were missing something… now you get to miss someone – who was never yours to begin with, because aliens were manipulating him (and preventing neck-whiplash in the process).

So – SOCIAL MEDIA – THE WORST! Stalking him at your fingertips – EVEN worse if he checks WatsApp statuses – that’s a killer, his little circle profile pic popping up on your phone uninvited, but desperately longed for … you see his pic unexpectedly, and BAM there’s a set of daggers stabbing your chest and you didn’t even sign up to be the target board at the funfair. Facebook, DO NOT befriend him – DO NOT – the pictures with his girlfriend – that WILL make his words true and officially you become the psycho he insinuated you are … you will see how he doesn’t actually ‘hold’ her in the photos, that it’s purely an ego grin / fake smile, and that one office party photo you have when you were caught off guard chatting together and his whole face is lit up with an incredible smile from his Soul… nope, his girlfriend photos will not be the same as the photo with you. BUT – HE CHOSE HER. So, get over it, get off Facebook, delete him {and the 600 WatsApps of meaningful 21st century styled ‘conversation’ between your phones over the morphed time period} and block him off your social media… scary part is, and the heart-breaking part – he isn’t even going to notice – WHY – because he isn’t stalking you… No to LinkedIn, no to Instagram, no to Twitter, no, no, no… torturing yourself every day is silly. Sacrificing all you are and all your brain time to this guy, who battles to keep aliens out of his head, is daft. You have so much to give. Even being on social media, it creates knots in your stomach, like he is on at the same time, you log on once a day and bam – he’s online at the same time – and your tummy runs with the nerves and the craziness of the situation and what you want to type (DO NOT TYPE), even your stomach is at odds. Get off the social media. Don’t post statuses ‘for him’, hoping he will read them and change his mind – he won’t. Delete his number so he cannot read them.

Besides, I promise you, you will have enough to get through without the social media – burning lips out of nowhere, like you are kissing him – and you will not be able to get rid of the burning, and it will literally feel like you are pyscho… even the GP cannot explain burning lips… Exhausted Adrenal Glands do lead to this though… also the daggers in the chest, a piercing pain through all of you… that doesn’t go away either … but often, a dose of alkaline powder, or anything that helps stop acid, can help, but sometimes it doesn’t and that pain, as you cry your brokenness into your pillow, stays … you aren’t alone, I have cried brokenness into my pillow too… I’m on round two – whilst the energy residue of round one still hasn’t left my kinesphere. The guy’s name – it is going to pop up in books, in newspapers, magazines, films, TV shows, other colleagues, conversations – the residue is going to hang worse than a 100-year-old house’s cobwebs. Whatever you associated with him: golf, rugby, ballroom dancing, blue car, chewing gum, whatever, that will also pop up everywhere and the associations at times will literally be unbearable – KEEP GOING! PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE – keep going. Keep going through the craziness, keep pushing on without him, delete all you need to to keep yourself sane and give your mind less to return to – he left the building by his choice, he’s dating someone else by his choice, don’t disrespect him by showing him to be incapable of making choices, if he is meant for you, show him you respect him, by respecting his choices. Be real. Go off to your own space – WRITE, put your pain into lyrics, poetry, song, blogs, plays, novels. Go off and draw with ink, colour, charcoal, whatever is new. Create love tweets for everyone but him, he chose someone else – remember – but you have to let that love flow. Help Animal Cruelty. Read the Bible – the only book written by someone who UNCONDITIONALLY LOVES you. Join a new group of dancers, runners, gymnasts, painters, artists, photographers, swimmers, whatever – just go out and do… and when the long, hard, ghost-filled night comes around – as it always does – wait it out, be kind to yourself, take herbal “rescue” tablets, push through the dark, difficult nights… for they are showing you the strength you have, the humanity you possess and the gorgeous depth of Spirit and Love and Awesomeness that are within you – they are powerful and need to be embraced, accepted, observed and learnt from… because it is preparing you for something greater – and you need to push through to get to embrace whatever that ‘greater’ may be … and it’s going to be awesome!

Keep going – you aren’t alone – you are awesome – stay shy, stay kind, stay lovely – grow stronger, push yourself, astound yourself – you got this, and if you got God, well, heh heh, then it’s all even so much more incredible!!! Love it!