*hive mind*

instagram

don't you love instagram?

💙i know i am shouting but i just adore it 💙

it was a whole lot better than bf (before facebook) but still better than fb

for my sins i am still on fb because its the only place where i can keep in touch with my friends who are spread across the country and those closest to me are towards swindon.

instagram has my heart the way pinterest once had

until the insidious creep of adverts and suggestions for pictures based on my likes. i cant even remember the last time i went on my pinterest  (saying that i will probably slink over and have a peek after this!)

there is little politics and much love and so many hive minds that it feels like my safe space and a place of utter joy-people sharing snippets of their lives, passing on ideas and support in a myriad of little ways. 

anyway, what i am getting at is how i seem to have touched a nerve with people in my last couple of ig posts about how i have been feeling change-positive change coming over me.

i have been feeling it for a couple of weeks, just a need for personal change-in myself and in my environment. i have spent the last year focusing so hard on the end of my degree and before lock down i was also working part time. my life was nothing but study, work and crashing into bed to fend off my m.e and fibromyalgia. 

i was effectively juggling 

lock down gave me time to think, assess and re-think and from comments on ig it seems it has done the same to many friends...i may not have met you in person, some of you i have known since the earliest days of blogging, and here we still are, communicating our lives over our screens, sharing our snippets...yes you are my tribe...

so we are now, as lock down is easing, making an assessment of our surroundings, our lives and you know what? i think it is going to bring us untold joy.

i started by starting a big de-clutter of my cottage, things i have never un-packed in two house moves in two years will be going. if i haven't missed it by now i don't think i ever will, i am going to keep surfaces clear, under the bed clear and easy to hoover...although i will need to buy cookie a little bed for under the bed as he still likes to sleep under there, old clothes will be gone...just stuff...gone!

i can almost feel the freedom like a weight lifted from my shoulders.

while the clutter is slowly going i have been thinking more about my life in general-

who i once was and who i have become.

long gone is the person tied into a gaslight relationship

its taken me four years to reach the point i am now.

i feel so free

i have my cottage, 

i have my North Star,

 i have my little Cookie 

and now i feel on the cusp of a whole new life. 

i feel that once the clutter is cleared then the door is wide open for the next stage in my life.

last week i bought a new set of oracle cards, ones i have seen being used by friends on ig, then two friends on fb posted about them and it felt like a sign...buy them!

i have to say they are beautiful and something seems right about them

last night my mind was full of what seemed like everything, i wasn't in the right frame of mind to do a proper reading, but still wanted to start working gently with them. so did some mindful breathing and picked one card...

this...

it says it all really doesn't it?!

~my small life~ part one

i say part one because i am clock-watching and may not get time to finish all i have to say in my limited time this morning...

my small life...

i thought these words as i walked down the steep, narrow stairs from my kitchen, mug of tea in hand, still in pyjamas, wrapped in a yak wool shawl, birkenstocks keeping my feet off the chill of the floor.

it was 6am i was headed back to bed with my tea for a couple of hours before my day really begins.

as those words entered my mind i knew i had to blog those words and everything associated with them, so back in bed i turned my laptop on and opened blogger for the first time in a year.

my small life...

my life has changed so much, all in positive ways and i am incredibly happy. i still get the black dog lurking, i still get days where i wake with almost paralyzing anxiety, but i am happy and since moving into the cottage i am content.

what i realised yesterday while sitting in my garden with my habitual mug of tea, listening to the birds, watching Arthur stalk the grass, was that i am living my life, i am living my life exactly the way i want to live my life.

everything here is me, you will walk in and see me reflecting in everything you see...writing this i realise that i need photos to explain it better...but that will have to wait for now.

i am finally in what i actually call my dream home~i have lived in the new forest for my whole life and have ancestors in the north of the forest going back hundreds of years so i feel very connected to the land. i have my own garden and that dream woodburner and more  importantly i can have my home as i wish.

i know that sounds a bit crazy but after so many years with someone who became increasing more dictatorial its important to me and it wasn't something i felt i had over the last two years. i think it has taken me two years to get used to the idea that i can please myself, that i am living alone in my own home and don't have to seek approval for my choices. even choices in buying things.

my small life...

i can stack my books how i like on my three bookcases...no-one to tell me they are untidy

i can stay up beyond 9pm without an angry face asking why i am not asleep

i can  buy whatever i like without being told 'no we are broke' or 'you have to sell something to buy new shoes/bag'

i can wash up and leave my dishes in the drainer

i can listen to my music...loud

i can grow my garden as i want to and allow the 'weeds' to flourish...

on that note my clock is telling me its time to get dressed and drive my little car across the forest, so come back soon for part 2 

~all change...~

so...

here i am...

after a years break from blogging....

i was walking down from my kitchen and thought of my living 'my little life' and realized i needed to blog...

so here i am...sitting in my bed with a bucket of good strong yorkshire tea, still not using upper-case....i am sorry life is too short!

my life has changed a lot since my last post...

i am still with my NS i am glad to say and our relationship is stronger and more secure than ever. he has become more settled, open and after a couple of very, very rocky moments he finally...finally realized that i am not like the women who have become before-i am not out to lie, cheat and abuse him

also, please meet Arthur-i took him in as an illegal lodger who was living on the cobbles and fed by my neighbour and then myself, and i brought him with me when i moved to live out a splendid retirement in the country.

i am nearing the end of my classical studies degree-this time next year it will all be over. right now i am in revison mode with an exam in june and i am already in panic mode, feeling i know nothing...less than nothing! but already i am thinking of doing my masters with the utmost in support from NS. its a lot to think about which i will be doing over the next year while i finish my degree.

the biggest thing...well two things really...is that i moved from my home by the sea in february...at imolc actually which felt so perfect.

i only moved about 7 miles but it feels like a million miles. i am now back within the boundaries of the new forest national park, still only a few miles from my family home, living in, what i call 'splendid isolation'

i am not totally isolated, but close. 

i now live in a small village with a strong history to the witches of the new forest in a little cottage that was once a one up, one down to the groom who looked after the working horses of the farm here...the stables are still next door but now home to my neighbour and her cat.

best of all i have a garden, a little patio and a shed and...off road, private parking so i will no longer have my beloved car vandalised.

 the french doors lead to a small cosy living room and i wish you could see the patio now...

 the kitchen is up a short flight of steep, narrow stairs and the floor has the oldest and longest oak boards i have ever seen

 i was finally able to plant out my welsh rowan

 oh, did i mention the woodburner?!

the first weekend i put in a feeder and now get...robins, sparrows, blue tits, great tits, gold finches, jackdaws, dunnocks, starlings,  wood pigeons, magpies, the occasional nut hatch and rooks and also wood mice, shrews and bank voles

and oh my but i am happy.

my old flat became awful...the almost constant noise from the art gallery downstairs, noise late at night on the cobbles, noise and smell from the salon, it didn't feel like home and the final straw was just before Christmas i caught my landlady coming down from my flat after using my bathroom...within two weeks both NS and i were looking for my new home.

i didn't hold out much hope of finding anywhere and so was a little half hearted then one morning NS sent me a link to a small, independent letting agent and this cottage had literally been listed only an hour earlier. so i launched an email campaign, suddenly the cottage was listed as let so then phoned only to be offered the chance to view the next day.

i was one of four people who viewed it and after a very anxious week i was offered it because 'they knew i would stay and love it'

two weeks later i was in,,,the same day going down with flu

there then followed the very rocky time with my NS

but it passed

so here i sit, in my little bedroom, drinking tea, hearing nothing but bird song and the classical music from my radio, Arthur is fast asleep on the end of the bed...and i just realized with all this catch up i went off track from what i originally wanted to write...

~time~

where does the time go? 

how has it been since my last post all these days~weeks have drifted away?

how easy it is to let the time drift away like leaves in a slowly moving stream and forget...

of course not everything is forgotten...

i sit here, tucked under my covers in bed, up in the roof of my old home overlooking the cobbles, my hand curled around my second mug of tea, Classic FM, as usual, coming from my radio. its just getting light and the sky over the old town quay is dark grey and full of rain.

time passes quickly in my new life. 

i have been here for nearly a year now and my life has its weekly routine of work, shopping, housework, my studies and taking my mum out and about. in the evenings its all about cooking and getting myself settled down with a book and my ever present radio.

my weekends are all about my tramper.

my beautiful, blue eyed, rough voiced, truck driving boy

we have just passed through the most difficult week of our 14 month relationship, when it had reached the stage of perfection i could have only dreamed of a year ago. we spent the most wonderful nine days together over yule and on new years eve in the space of a couple of hours it went from perfection to him nearly ending it and last week we barely spoke.

i wont go into it now, the hurt is still there but slowly fading for both of us and please don't think badly of him for he did not betray me nor i him.

i was distraught although sent him my usual messages so he knew i was still here and committed to him, i ate very little and by Friday was looking dreadful and struggling to hold the tears at bay.

By that evening i was heartbroken and went to bed in tears having convinced myself it was all over~within ten minutes my phone rang and in the next 20 hours it rang another six times and each time we talked and slowly started to laugh again. in the day following we spoke again twice and made arrangements for next weekend. 

so we survived~despite everything we still missed each other and love has won.

while i never doubted i wanted the relationship to survive he needed time to think and i feel joy that he chose to fight for us and not just give up as an easy option.

yes~our relationship had become perfection and see what he bought me for Christmas...

meet Babette

he knew i have had three previously and thought how suited i am to them...we drove all the way to Suffolk for her, a 440 mile round trip.

so we have had our first, serious blip in our relationship and survived

~re-birth-

of course she had to go

solsticedreamer doesn't exist anymore

she belonged to a different life, a different time

she belongs to a world I no longer inhabit

no longer exists to 'friends' who betrayed her

***

she belongs to a time past, a time where a community was forged and close friendships made.

to almost idyllic times.

the betrayal now makes that seem false and I can see how quickly people will turn on you, will publicly express their opinion that you are having a midlife crisis and that they hoped karma will turn and bite you.

well I don't need that kind of person in my life

and so solsticedreamer had to go

punkwitch was born 

she seems more appropriate to the person I have become...or rather the person I always was but had lost somewhere over 17 years.

okay, so in the depths of my anxiety I don't feel like punkwitch

but this is punkwitch...

over the last months I have been to see echo and the bunnymen in southampton, the damned in Portsmouth and seth lakeman in poole, have a ticket to see the jesus and mary chain in april in bounemouth...all on my own. something I would have never contemplated 8 months ago.
i have a car
I have my own home in a beautiful area
I am finishing my degree
I have a little job that my fibromyalgia is just about letting me do
I have true friends who love and support me
I have my beautiful tramper

~a love story~

so much has changed since my last post here

my life has followed some tangled webs and I have shed many, many tears but finally come out the other end.

~September-October~

I went to Scotland in mid-September for 16 days to stay with my dad while my step-mum was visiting my step-brother in Australia. while there P slowly started to increasingly withdraw from any online contact and I figured that he was having problems and hiding himself away.

during that time I realised that while there was the strong connection that we both acknowledge existed between us was too much 'baggage', way too much baggage for either of us to cope with having such a physical distance between us.
one day I walked up into the hills behind my dads home and wept the whole way, really wept, I felt bereft because I finally realised I was chasing something that I honestly felt would never happen, that I could not just wait and wait, watching my life pass me by, possibly for nothing.
I reached the top of the hill, sat on a high dry stone wall and still I wept...wept for what could have been, for the dream of an 'us' that would never happen.
when I walked back down that hill some hours later, freezing cold and wrung out of tears I felt strong and brave. ready to move on from my dream into reality.


~November~

from almost out of nowhere came M.
my friend T suggested that I 'put myself out there' on an online dating site, I was honestly unsure and suspicious, but I registered...even now I don't know why I did it.
then one day a photograph came up of a serious, bearded man, with absolutely no information on his profile, unlike my essay that was horribly honest...probably to put men off me.

but there was something about this picture that drew me, I wrote and discarded four messages to him before actually sending one and I didn't think I would hear anything back once he read my profile. however the next night, the 12th November, I was sitting reading when he messaged me, we spoke for a short while then he went off and I was sure I would hear nothing more. but the next day he appeared again and again I was sure I would never hear back from him, his way of messaging appeared very abrupt almost awkward. But again the next day he returned, then again the next day, then again the next day...
seven days later in a fit of anxiety about whether he even liked me I sent him a long message explaining I liked him, that I hoped he wasn't just being polite in talking to me but included my mobile phone number.
I sent it and immediately panicked and spent the whole day in a tangle of emotions, convinced I had scared him off.
that night my phone rang and I answered, not thinking and a voice went 'hello punkwitch'...my nickname I took after shedding the name solsticedreamer (that in itself is another story for another day) and it was him saying thank you for the message and how beautiful and honest he found it.


10th of January 2017...

not a day has passed since the 12th November that we have not messaged each other...
on the 26th November we spent the day and evening together and I met his brother and sister in law.
the phone calls started and we spend hours talking.
on the weekend of the 10th of December we had our first weekend together
On boxing day he came, with a gift of a beautiful pair of blue DM boots, and stayed with me for three days
New Years Eve we drove up to Scotland so he could meet my dad and step-mum. he explained he was 'old school' and it was out of respect for my dad because he was seeing his daughter.
we spent New Years Eve sleeping in his motorhome on the shores of Clatteringshaws Loch in the Galloway Dark Sky Park.
the following Friday and Saturday, in the space of 24 hours, we spoke on the phone for ten hours

we are planning holidays in the summer to Cornwall and Scotland
we are planning to visit a canal boat festival because his ultimate aim is to buy and live on a canal boat and he has already spoken about this life event with me being in it with him.

this man,
this burly, bearded man with tattoos and pony tail, who lives in a big Mercedes motorhome and spends his week days driving a massive 44 ton truck around the country has without doubt become the complete and utter love of my life.
he is handsome, with glorious bright blue eyes, a beautiful smile and is kind, sweet, funny, generous

but it is more than that, much more than that
he once messaged saying
'have we known each other forever?'
it feels that way, it feels he has become part of my very soul, part of the essence of my being


21st February...

my M is still part of my life, and becoming a bigger part of my life every day that passes.
we still message every single day, talk on the phone when we don't see each other at weekends...but importantly we are able to see each other more at weekends and this is my new story...