Getting Sober; a Positive Trajectory

If you have been following my posts you would know that I am by now almost, but not quite, four months sober.
The same amount of time it takes a fetus to grow legs strong enough to start kicking its mother.
Incidentally I am also trying to get pregnant, thus the baby analogy.

I could liken my experience of getting sober with coming out of a cocoon thinking you're a worm and discovering you are a butterfly.
Not the most beautiful butterfly, not the most intelligent, talented or the best organised. Definitely not the best organised...
Close to being the worst organised butterfly in all of existence.
But still better than a worm.

Of course, this might not have the same significance to everyone.
For me it is a new life, one that I have never experienced but often witnessed (and with great jealousy and incomprehension) in others.
To completely understand this statement I will have to tell you a little bit more about my drinking habits.
If you are an avid reader of my blogs you might have suspected a teeny weensy problem but you never know for sure until
the fat lady sings.

And boy did that bitch sing...

I've always liked wine. Specifically red wine. Tassenberg was for sale at my favourite club for R20 a bottle.
It was cheap and highly effective. It even tasted okay sometimes, differing from bottle to bottle.
Black Label beer also fell into this category.
Back then I had very little money because I was a student and worked at Spur for "party money".

I was the world's worst waitress.
Customers often looked at me slack-jawed when I asked the man at the table to open the bottle of wine if it had a cork.
I could not afford cork wine, always screw top, so I did not have the expertise necessary to flawlessly execute the opening thereof.

I constantly slipped on wet spots on the floor and fell on my ass, spilling buffalo wings and lemon wedges into my hair.
I had no clue how to pronounce Quesadilla (it came out kasadia) and often brought absurdly wrong food to my tables.

Case in point, I was skint.

So I often had to make do with less than R50 on a Saturday night, depending on how wrong I got that week's orders.
So Tassies and Zamaleks did the trick quite nicely. I could get a nice buzz on and not break the bank.
This is probably something a lot of people could relate to, most students drink whenever and wherever they get the chance and I was desperate to be "a typical student".
A nice normal young person.

Of course life will have its trinkets and soon became harder.
My first real job as a hygienist gave me insight into why alcohol was invented, to the max.
Every Friday my bff and I would meet after work to lament our loveless lives and torture jobs, sometimes drinking red wine and other times Martini's. Hers with Vodka and mine with Gin.
We would cry rivers into napkins and then eat what we called "traumazini's", often throwing them back up later that same evening.

This was still okay because we were both going through terrible heartbreak and really only drank over the weekends.
We were after all, still too broke to really invest in a bright future of alcoholism.

Over the years, this changed, however.
She basically stopped drinking and I kept powering on, drinking more and more frequently until finally it was a daily habit.
I was still functional, still working and paying bills and brushing my teeth and washing my hair, but it all started becoming more and more taxing.

As the day wore on I would start thinking about that first round glass of red, still spanking and free of grubby finger marks and lipstick. What a relief it would be to take that first sip, feeling the sting and the beginning of a tiny case of heartburn. Even before that! The sound of the bottle uncorking and the wine decanting into the glass (I had mastered this art by that point).

Phwop! Gloog-gloog-gloog-gloog-gloog.

I loved it all.

Wine immediately cheered me up and the good Lord knows, I needed cheering up.
Everything was a complete disaster.
My boss had started seeing problems with everything I did, my marriage was a nightmarish soup of horrible fights and lonely nights and I had gotten down right chubby.

Wine was my friend and she could be found everywhere I went.
Except church. Not that I was exactly in the habit of going there anyway.
Everyone else went to church and I went to Cool Runnings.
That was where I healed my hurts.

I had many problems and alcohol sure as hell wasn't one of them.
It was the only thing keeping me from driving off a bridge.
Except when I was drunk, Then I tried to steer clear of bridges.

As most of us knows, especially those of us who tend to stay up all hours of the night, it is often darkest before the dawn.
The divorce drove me absolutely insane. I went out of my way to destroy myself, making incredible, mind-numbing mistakes (I am not going to go into detail here but if you want you can go ahead and cringe as if I did.) and isolating myself more and more.
It is a miracle that I am still alive.


Until one day things started looking up. Someone (now my husband) came into my life and treated me with so much kindness that I was deeply suspicious of him. Who sent him? What did he want from me? Blood?
I mean had I not bled enough?!
And just when I had made peace with the fact that this will now be my life, drinking wine, sometimes mixing it with a sleeping tablet and falling asleep watching horror movies, with my cats and laptop on top of me.
I had sworn off contact with other living beings as far as possible while not getting fired from my job.
For years my mantra was simply "Step one; don't get fired today".

I was so overwhelmed by the muchness of my life that I even made a rule that people can only ask me questions on Tuesdays.
Mondays were reserved for catatonic, drooling-on-myself, gibbering with fear of what the week will bring but on Tuesdays I sometimes came alive for a few hours and steeled myself for adversity.
On Wednesday I would come to the realisation that all that steeling myself only set me up for more disappointment and so I would go back to drooling on myself until Friday came and released me from the hell that is getting out of bed.

On Sunday I would seriously contemplate suicide but then the wine and sleeping tablet would kick in and I'd be back to Monday.
Just a few days ago I was asking my husband a bunch of senseless little questions and he replied with my standard statement of that time: "Questions on Tuesdays".
I laughed, at first more out of surprise at the reminder and then laughed harder at the silliness that was me.
Then stopped and reflected on the insurmountable gratitude I felt at not being there anymore.

How difficult must my life have been for me to not even be able to reasonably respond to a simple question like "what would you like to eat tonight?" on any other day except for Tuesdays?
The answer is, of course, very. Very hard. I know this with my mind but I can't truly remember exactly how it felt because it scares me to even try.

Just the other day I was telling someone about my latest adventures in the land of iced tee and she said: "I can't stop drinking now, not with the divorce" and I found myself wondering how I would have coped without it when I was going through that.
Where I am sitting now, I believe I would have handled it better. The wine did distract me and kept me warm at night (that and the uncontrollable sobbing, so loud the neighbours called the cops once) but did I really have a chance to just feel?
Just sit there and acknowledge that my heart was shattered and still shattering and my mind was slipping like a toddler on ice skates and that all of that is normal.
And will pass.

Maybe, maybe not. But I do know this; if ever there was a time for me to not "need" mood-alteration anymore, it was when Mr T (now husband) walked into my life and made everything bearable again.

And yet Phwop! Gloog-gloog-gloog-gloog-gloog.

I didn't think too much of it because judging from Facebook posts by my acquaintances, I was pretty normal.
Three or four glasses of red wine per night seemed okay and they were really only two because I never really finished a glass before refilling it. So actually just one.
Right?

Then one night I was lying in his arms (little birdies and bubbles would have been surrounding my head if I were a cartoon, from all the wine I had that night) and he said these words:
"Baby, I see you struggling and I want to help you but I don't know how. And you are so much better than this."

And suddenly and in stark relief I realised: I am an alcoholic.
I am Elmien, and I'm an alcoholic.

Falling Pregnant...a negative trajectory

Getting pregnant seems to be a bit of a bitch so far.

At first I thought it would happen immediately. The Mirena came out *pop* and boom I would be fertile as hell and Tommie would just walk by me and voila!
Little Grovetjie on the way.

As the months passed I started realising that this is not so.
Why not? Teenagers all swear they only did it once and fell pregnant.

Am I too old? Are my ovaries so conditioned by the fervent please-don't-let-me-be-pregnant prayers I've been saying every night for the past ten years?

Other people say it's because I am stressed. How does one tell exactly how stressed one is?
I usually know my stress levels are through the roof when my eyes start twitching and I stop going number two for weeks on end, which culminates in extreme stomach ache and moodiness.

These days whenever I feel moody I assess what time of the month it is.
Since going off my antidepressants (blog to follow) and birth control I have had insane PMS every month but only a few days before Aunt Flo visits.

This past month I had PMS-like symptoms for two weeks before hand, headaches every day, bloatedness and crazy dreams.
Thus, said my mind, I must be pregnant, finally.

And this time I felt ready.

The last time I thought I might be it scared me a little and I groped for the bottle.
Since then I stopped drinking (blog to follow).

I mean, since Feb. I have stopped my sleeping tablets, antidepressants, mood stabilisers, antihistamines and alcohol.
I am extremely sober and feel everything.

Am I not a worthy subject for a child?

This seems to be a common conclusion in women that struggle to fall pregnant. What's wrong with us? Do we have so many feelings of guilt and shame that we believe we don't
deserve a kid?
And then when the kid is there it also seems like a kind of punishment.

Then women seem to think back to all the grief they gave their own mothers and start feeling like God gave them a difficult child to get back at them.
Granted this does seem to be the cycle of life.

We are born, we give our parents hell and then we have our own children who give us hell until they in turn give us grandchildren who give them hell and so on and so forth
until the sun supernovas and kills us all.

Let's start at the beginning.

In Feb. my Mirena has done its job for five years which means it was time to have it removed.
Getting it in was such a mission that the doctor had to put me under to succeed and a 15 min operation turned into almost an hour.
He said my cervix was so small I barely needed the damn thing.
So understandably I was a bit worried when he said he'll just yank it out in the chair without any drugs of any sort.

At this point you might be wondering how a person like me is ever going to survive labour or even a c-section.

Anywho, I decided to trust the man and went to the appointment ready to be yanked. At least I was still drinking back then so I had that and a holiday we were planning
to look forward to.

When push came to shove, or rather yank came to shove, I was petrified and steeled myself for excruciating pain but before it could even start feeling like pain it was
over and I felt like a kind of Mirena birthing goddess.
A highly fertile one.

So off we went on holiday because whenever one of us quits our jobs we have to go to the coast to "wash off the misery" before starting the next one, and I had just finished
my notice month at the hell I worked at for five and a half years (blog to follow...maybe).
The first time we did it I thought we were pregnant. I mean isn't that what sex-ed taught us all? Sex leads to pregnancy?
It seems this is only true for teenagers.

I started talking to other women, customers actually, some of which went to school with me or studied with me. A lot of them had also recently started trying for kids
and had varying degrees of success.
They gave me tips about downloading apps and eating certain things and lying on your back afterward to "help the little guys" and so on and so forth.

So I downloaded an app which tells me specifically when the "window is open" and we must get down to business, so to speak.
This quickly grew tiresome.
Scheduling sex time is not supposed to have to happen in the first two years of marriage, I believe, but you know how it goes...right?
Sometimes we are busy and tired and whatever, but the "full window has to be used" according to the app.

Other sites say that every second day is fine. This is still way too much thinking and planning for me.
And why on earth did God make us so that we can only really fall pregnant one day out of the month. Is it so that we won't have millions of children running around without planning them?
Because that seems to happen anyway. To people that aren't me, anyway.

Spending time with little kids also doesn't seem to be a good idea because they look like extremely hard work and can be highly annoying (when I suspect I might be up the duff).
Other times they are adorable and beautiful and give meaning to life (when I know I am not pregnant).

This see saw is driving me crazy.

The worst part is seeing other people fall pregnant around me.

I have a friend who is planning on having a baby on her own and has started the process. We have been dreaming of falling pregnant together for three years.
What if she manages and I can't?
What will that say about me?

I have my issues and am still struggling with a few things but that can't be why, right?
I should be healthy and fertile as fuck right now but noooo.

It might be because husband and I still smoke. Now, I have been told that quitting drinking and smoking at the same time is a terrible idea and I am blindly following all instructions
I receive from people that have been sober now for over a year because they obviously know what they are doing.
Then I realise that I am 33 years old, the age my mother fell pregnant with me, her fourth child.
An unplanned "laat lammetjie".

I've quit smoking before with Mr. Carr and it wasn't hard but I don't want to screw up my sobriety, which I consider the most important thing in my life at the moment.

So we are back at square one. The square where everyone tells me to "just relax" and "stop trying so hard".
What does that even mean? Should I think about all the horrible parts of being a parent so the universe will knock me up just to be spiteful?
At some point I decided to just enjoy all the things a childless person can enjoy, which previously came down to mostly one thing: drinking.
A thing which parents actually seem to embrace with a passion once the little bundle of love is off the breast.
But I  hear other things I can add to this list are: sleeping, leaving the house and not worrying/crying all the time.

On the plus side, I am losing weight. It seems that the Mirena can increase appetite and bmi. Also, we all know alcohol is fattening.
After 30 anyway, before, it seemed to be slimming, haha.

I'm going to go read a book now...another thing I can add to the list of things children seem to take away from you.
Sigh.

Zolpi-DONE

Ever since matriculating my life has been one long line of heart breaks and chemical warfare against myself.
I guess at times it was fun but at the beginning of 2016 a little voice spoke up in my mind.
She sounded exactly like the Child Empress in Neverending Story but instead of asking me to say her name, she said:
"You are ready to wake up, now".

The Child Empress has never before been one of my "voices" so this was interesting and new and so I started keeping an eye out for
signs of what this might mean.
She might have been referring to the fact that I never truly woke up before 17:00 in the afternoon because then work would
be done and I could get my freedom on. But I knew this was a problem and didn't need a Child Empress to enlighten me to this.

Secondly she might have been trying to wake me from an actual coma in which case I would probably be an old lady in a dilapidated hospital and all my loved ones would be gone or dead or
given up on me. If this was the case the first thing I would do when I woke up is clobber the doctor who had obviously been giving me the generic drugs while I was out because much
of my time was spent having awful nightmares about screwing up my life and getting absolutely nowhere.

Thirdly, I was about to drink my last sleeping tablet that night and it was the end of the script.

I had a choice now;

1.) Go to the doctor and try and persuade him to give me another script and no I am not abusing them. Yes I am on some psych meds too. Why? Because I'm crazy that's all.
Lots of people are crazy. Everyone should be on pills. Okay?! JUST GIMME THE EFFING SCRIPT YOU BITCH!

2.) Stop taking sleeping tablets.


The second option was terrifying. I had never been a good sleeper and when I did sleep I had vivid night terrors which caused me to rocket from my bed and run screaming into the night.
Don't believe me? Ask anyone, literally anyone who had spent the night with me, before I had started taking the knock out tablets.

No there aren't that many guys that have had the privilege.
And that's not the point...Judgy Mcjudgerton, sheese.

In order to survive these awful nights of never sleeping again ever, I started working on one of my fabled plans.

Queue mission impossible theme song:

I would get home from work, cook dinner and have wine.
Then watch TV, having more wine.

Then when the clock struck 21:00 I would have a relaxing candle lit bubble bath.
This was easy because the bathroom light had been blown for months so I had to use candles and I still had bubble bath from my first kitchen tea in 2009.
The bubble bath had survived my first marriage *hang head in shame for failing at first marriage and never using bubble bath during it*.

Have more wine in romantic bath.

Maybe invite husband to join me.

Husband not interested in having romantic bath with drunken wife.

Send husband for more wine.

Husband refuses and pours last glass of wine down drain.

Freak out.

Husband feels so bad that he gets more wine.

Get into neatly made bed with fresh glass of wine.

Read a book. Not Steve King, no, we are looking for calm dreams, maybe some light Marian Keyes.

Read until eyelids start getting heavy.

Switch off light and feel extremely awake.

Ask husband to smother you with pillow, just a little.

Husband refuses.

Husband = rebel.


After executing this plan the next night because my sleepers were then depleted, I didn't sleep at all.
This sucked a lot because sleeping seems important. And fun.

The sun rose and found I had turned into an extremely hung over zombie.

Luckily it was a Friday and most people at the company where I worked operated at half speed on Fridays anyway, actually mostly because they too were hung over zombies.
What is it with a Thursday night and drinking our heads off?
Is it because it's almost Friday and we might explode from excitement because we get to do nothing but drink for two whole days?
And then wake up Friday morning never wanting to drink again?

Yeah that seems logical enough.

Back to me.
That night we had a braai with friends and I told them all about it and how terribly hung over I was *said sipping on wine*.
And they were very sympathetic and supportive *also sipping on various alcoholic drinks*.

And that night I slept, if you could call it that.
My brain had effectively blocked all memory of the dreams I had but they were incredibly horrible. Like a David Lynch movie had a child with a Japanese horror movie.
And that child turned out to be a nightmare and I gave birth to it.

This kept on going and was later joined by feelings of weirdness. That is the best way I could describe them.
I googled Zolpidem withdrawel and boom there it all was, listed neatly from top to bottom and some of them I could still look forward to.

But as with all highly unpleasant circumstances, this passed and I sort of became a normal sleeper again. Actually better than how I used to be with only the occasional leaping from bed and running yammering into the night.

My husband who had only ever spent the night next to me after I had a firm Zolpidem habit underway was in for a treat.

Now because I am always asleep when these night terrors catapult me into the dark of night, I usually don't remember what I dreamed about or where I was headed or sometimes that anything had happened at all.

But the latest one I remember clearly.

In the dream husband and I were in a garage of some kind when suddenly the garage door started closing and somehow falling sideways towards us.
Me having noticed this was frantically trying to get out from underneath it and astonished to see that husband was not bothered.
In fact he looked like he was sleeping, peacefully.

Luckily my cat immediately caught on to the fact that some catastrophic (pardon the pun) event was transpiring and speedily vacated the room in a flash of Siamese coloured fur.

My desperate clawing and sputtering finally woke my husband and he said something that stopped me dead in my tracks because of its bizarreness.

"Wat gaan aan, blaashasie?".

Translation: I can't...it Just doesn't work in English. But it involves a bunny rabbit.

Suddenly the garage door vanished and I was standing next to my nice safe bed in the middle of the night, looking down into the confused, half smiling face of my husband.
I was trying to make sense of his question when I realised my cat must have been roused by my sudden scuffling, assessed the situation as Mommy has gone Loco (again?)
and left as a result, not because of a garage door falling in slow motion towards him.

And it was funny.
It was so funny that the sound that came out of me next was a loud, unexpected guffaw of mirth.
The fact that he had called me a "blaashasie" joined in on the hilarity and saw me hysterically scream-laughing for the rest of the night.

This time when the sun came up it found a very different picture of me.

Lying in bed, gripping the covers, eyes half closed, still weakly giggling and happy as hell.

Hasta la vista, Zolpidem.

Wine; Gateway Drug to Pole Dancing

I love having a plan and am pretty good at it, even if I say so myself.

Now even though my personal development plan (PDP to the corpees out there) always said my “area of development” (aka shit I’m not good at doing) said “planning” in big red letters the last six years of my employment, that’s not entirely accurate.

I just didn’t like the kind of planning they wanted me to do, is all.

But when it comes to my life, my actual experience as a human being, planning is crucial to me.

Now, this might conjure up images of me having a Filofax (#80’s), an immaculate diary and a daily routine that flows seamlessly from point A through to point Z, at the end of which I slide into my perfectly made, pethairless* bed, legs shaved to a silky finish but still somehow tanned, my flawless body lovingly dressed in a beautiful negligee, close my eyes and drift into the kind of slumber reserved specially for those who have everything under perfect control.

That would be a misconception of epic proportions.

When I said “plans” I really meant “backup plans”…even “escape plans” might describe the things I hoard in my head a little better.

In other words, these plans are there so that I can continue living through mildly to extremely unpleasant events while only being sort of present. The other part of me will be off preparing the future scenario in my mind, where everything will be completely different and obviously much nicer.

Even though that doesn’t even matter either because by the time that reality is in the present, half of me will be off to the next hypothetical scenario, fluffing the pillows of that next, glorious bed, metaphorically speaking.

Okay, let’s talk real examples.

One night in the not so distant past, I was sitting hunched over on the couch with a box of cheapish red on the coffee table and a very grimy wine glass in my hand, staring at the clock. It said 02:00. What a depressing time to be awake and holding a grubby wine glass.

This behaviour had been spiraling slowly out of control over the previous two weeks or so and I knew the signs when I saw them.

I was drinking too heavily and gaining weight at an alarming rate. This could also partly be ascribed to continuously stuffing my face with potato chips to get the wine taste out of my mouth. Insanity, thy name is annoyance!

But, being a wise and experienced sage, I chose not to:

aa.)    Put down the wine and go to bed like an adult

Or

bb.)    Pour all the alcohol in the house down the drain like a crazed alcoholic.

No

.

I quietly kept sipping my wine as I got out my little note pad and started jotting down ideas of how to address this problem realistically.

Of course, this was fraught with danger as an inebriated mind can come up with some crazy shit at two in the morning.

And mine did not disappoint.

Plan number one was *drumroll* pole dancing!

If I went to pole dancing lessons all the time, I wouldn’t have time to drink, it will obviously whip me into fabulous shape which in turn will boost my self-esteem so much I wouldn’t feel like drinking as much and the big one: I will learn how to pole dance, heck yeah!

I already felt better just dreaming about how amazing I was going to be, so the rest of the wine and potato chips tasted a little less depressing and I managed to weave my way through the house to bed where I breathed vile fumes into my poor husband, who I shall refer to from here on forth as Truluv* (gangsta for True Love)’s face.

A truly wonderful plan has as much merit in being made as in being deployed.

Which is a good thing because my hangover lasted ages and The Plan couldn’t unfold until I could face daylight without hissing again.

Finally, after toying with the idea of ditching the plan just to screw with myself a little more, I found a place and went to my very first class.

This was sobering for two reasons. For one, I was used to having my first tittle by this time of the evening and two; instead of sinking into the couch with said tittle, I was standing in a room filled with poles, younger and thinner women -girls even- and swaddled in what can only be described as an eclectic mix up of garments I thought people generally learn pole dancing in.

Run run run until you get to London! Said brain.

Glub glub time? Enquired addictive personality centre in brain.

No, replied I, squaring my double chin.

The instructor flounced in with a body to weep over but teeth that soothed my jealousy, ever so slightly.

She made the newbies sign waivers so we couldn’t sue them if we dropped on our heads and developed resentful feelings.

Then we did a few little exercise-esque things and I felt impatient to start with the good stuff. When with the flying and the beautifulness, miss?

So I was very excited when she clapped her hands together and announced the time to start poling.

She showed as a step up thing that seemed as easy as cherry pie until I tried it and found that I weigh a million pounds and as a result have extreme difficulty getting off the ground and onto the pole.

Also once I finally managed to heave myself up I experienced a sensation I imagined akin to having your shin flayed, then doused with boiling sea water.

Sliding from the pole with yelp of surprise and expression of indignation, I almost enquired WTF dude? From the smirking instructor. But she seemed used to this sound and expression being expressed in her studio and calmly handed me some liquid chalk for my sweaty palms, which made me forgive her instantly because Ohhhhh! It’s not because of me being grotesquely overweight, it’s just slippery hands causing this ungainliness! ohhh!

Trying out the basic spin she showed us and losing the top layer of skin behind my knee, I found another highly unpleasant factor of this class, and funny enough it was not the loss of previously mentioned skin.

There is a giant mirror, no not a mirror, a WALL made of mirror, in the front of the room…and I…in it. Plainly visible to the naked eye. Painfully large and with a stunned look on my face and red shins.

How to deal with this problem.

Subconscious Brain was luckily quick-footed and sure of wit because apart from the first spin I managed to execute quite nicely, after spotting the lesser spotted and in fact much avoided me in the mirror, I instantly lost the ability and could only turn in semi-circles, always away from the mirror.

Coming to a screeching halt inches away from facing myself again, the thought did cross my mind that this activity, although sobering, was much trickier than previously anticipated.

As I drove home, it started raining and a tiny wave of goodfeelingness didn’t exactly wash over me, but sort of climbed on top of me and lay there.

This is good, I did something! I worked out and did a basic turn! I wonder if I should have a glass of wine to celebrate. Oh no, I thought of wine! What do I do?

So I went home and I honestly can’t remember whether I had wine or not…which probably means that I did…but that’s not the point.

I kept going to the classes and sometimes there would be other beginners, no that’s not a strong enough word for what we were, EXTREME beginners who would practice on the same pole as me and have the same difficulties and sheepish looks on their faces, which really helped. One of them were even a little bit bigger than me, which helped a whole lot.

Most days-after I wouldn’t be able to walk like a natural person and would hobble from dentist to dentist (I’m a dental sales rep) with, let’s call it a primateal bounce gait*.

But after about three weeks of going to two classes per week, I started feeling a little tighter around the midriff and stomach.

This was probably as a result of both exercising as well as not drinking and pigging out on Tuesdays or Thursdays, so yay for me, even though I was still indulging my head off on all other days of the week…especially Sundays… I hate you Sunday.

Alas, this brief window of respite was not to last…

On a dark and stormy night, far away from home, in an evil cave called Protea Hotel Polokwane, I was destined to slip and fall in the dumb shower/bath while rinsing the shampoo from my hair…and DIE!

Well die, if by dying you mean landing on the side of the tub rim with your ribs and straining your intercostal muscles, causing you to screech uncontrollably and then in turn causing severe pain in the event of uncontrollable screeching, which causes an infinite loop of uncontrollable screeching.

Thus bringing my budding career as a stripper to a premature end.

Or did it?

*copyright dibs on the phrases “Pethairless”, “Truluv” and “Primateal Bounce Gait”

God Gave Me Kurt Cobain

Every night when I go to bed I am confronted not by the demons of the past but by the wraiths of the future. Maybe it’s just the vision of my own black cat crossing my path, the fact that I have broken countless mirrors in my lifetime or that I walk underneath the ladder stored in the garage every day.
I think it’s just paranoia, but it still sucks.
But maybe it’s because I am finally really happy, almost boringly so, and not used to this kind of feeling.

Actually I’m used to total chaos. I mean at school things were relatively straightforward. I had more time on my hands to get bored with and did kind of cool things with it, like glue a bunch of beads together and then throw it out the window.
And when I met a boy I worked out strenuously every day seven days a week until my body was perfect. But he kept going back to this other girl so I kept at it like a…well a teenager.
But then he went back to her anyway.

Then time was spent on writing AWFUL self loathing teenage poetry to the croon of Radiohead’s Bulletproof.
And then writing TERRIBLE self pitying songs in a dark room with my guitar.
My sister once asked me if I wanted to be Kurt Cobain.
I said no I want to marry him, duh.
She said he has been dead since 1994.
After waking up from my faint, I explained to her that Kurt Cobain is my DESTINY!
Nope, sorry sis. He’s definitely dead.
Shotgun head dead.

After doing the necessary research to moot this preposterous notion I had to do an hour of extreme cardio…because it was true.
I suddenly realized I've been praying every night for God to give me a dead man as a groom and here I was mourning the death of the most beautiful and romantic future relationship.
But at least I knew he went to heaven, I mean with that face and voice he could go anywhere.
Wait a minute… no, no I think the face and the voice and the minor incident where he accidentally killed himself might have caused him to go to hell.
What does the bible say? THINK THINK!
Oh yes, I think it said something about some guy that went to hell begging for just one drop of water on his tongue but then just a little bit later God yanked him out and took him somewhere else. Ah yes, it was Lazarus.
Well I was saddened by the thought that my Kurt might be in such torment so I went to my sister and asked her if she thinks we can pray for someone after they have died?
She said knock yourself out.
So I did. For about a month, I think.
So hopefully Kurt is in a Nirvana of sorts now, probably playing a harp instead of the guitar but man I bet he is ROCKING that harp!

About ten years after the tragic loss of my future rock star husband I was dancing in my favourite club called Zeplins. My heart had recently been shattered by my first true love and I was rappelling off the wild side of the cliff’s edge, if you know what I mean.
So there I was doing my thing, funneling straw rum, bouncing from guy to guy trying to get some attention (don’t judge me, my self esteem was slightly compromised by being dumped by someone that said we were meant to be together forever even in the afterlife, that God said this to him (Really? Did He have a very deep voice? Because it could have been the janitor).
I was about halfway through my tenth quadruple gin and tonic when I saw him.
It was Kurt Cobain. But less dead. And younger.
I stared at him for as long as possible without people noticing the sad, weird little 6 staring at the magnificent, can-get-any-girl-he-wants 10.
It was about a week later that a friend of mine said she saw a cute guy but felt too shy to go chat him up and when she pointed at “Kurt” my heart sank.
He would go for her. She had long legs, clear skin and sky blue eyes.
She was an 8.

I realized that my chance to talk to him was fading rapidly so I volunteered to go chat him up for her. Well at least get him to come over.
So I bounced over to him on a 150% flirtation velocity power.
I said dumb things, he didn't say much, there was a roaring in my ears and my blood was the raging rapids in my arteries.
Somewhere in the conversation which was very short, because I kept inhaling and forgetting to exhale and worried about exploding disgustingly in front of him, he came back to meet my friend.

They dated for 3 effing years.
Three years of pure torture.
They came over to house parties, braai’s, movie nights, everything! I couldn't stand seeing him so often because it fanned my crush and I loved my friend so I knew I had to get it together and keep it together.
But it was a real challenge.

I couldn't make eye contact with him for fear of starting a conversation…about how beautiful he is.
I couldn't smile at him for fear of him smiling back, in which case I would be blasted into a fantasy world in my head where he is mine, which I couldn't do because that would be wrong. So I avoided the smile.
I also couldn't be with him in the same room without lots of other people there which was sometimes very difficult. As groups move, some people move as a bundle and some move in their own personal space, usually after waiting for the throng to get through the doorway first. “Kurt” and I obviously had that same condition because we were always the last two to get out of the room.
Now this might seem stupid but even a second with him next to me and the others trailing down the hallway was temptation enough for me to grab him by his shirt and scream I LOVE YOU PLEASE MARRY ME into his face.
But friendship came first for me in those silly days, so I worked hard to delete my feelings.
Eventually when they broke up he disappeared and I thought I would never see him again.

But about 5 years after that, out of literally thousands of people, I ran into him and his new girlfriend who I barely saw (except for the fact that she was skinny) because I was agonizing over the insane cruelty of life.
Here I am running into this man, looking hideous.
I was going through an identity crisis, you see, I had cut my hair super short, dyed it bright red and decided to pick up like a 1000 kg’s as an afterthought.
He seemed pleased enough to see me again but not exactly falling over his feet. If I was a 6 before, I was a 4 now.
We chatted a bit and then said goodnight and split up again.
I thought I was never going to see him again.

But about 2 years after that I ran into an old friend, from the Zeplins days, who invited me to his birthday party, and BOOM!
There the man stood in his friend’s living room looking leg bucklingly beautiful as always.
While I was staring at him, a very skinny girl came from the right and said “Elmien!”
And I said: “Do we know each other?”
And she said: “yes silly, we met at that big party about two months ago, when my boyfriend didn't even introduce me” (some resentment in voice).
Oh, it beautiful man’s girlfriend.
Ever heard that song by Avril?

Hey hey, you you I don’t like your girlfriend, no way no way think you need a new one, she’s like so whatever, I can do so much better.

I am not proud of how I behaved that night. I was recently divorced and had nothing left to lose, so I went in firing on all cylinders and flirted shamelessly with him.
“Hey nice to see you again, such a pity you have a girlfriend, we could have been making out in my car right now”, I must have been high off my rocker.
I even tricked him into having our picture taken, just the two of us. Forced him to put his arm around me and then bit him on his armpit. He barely blinked an eye.
So I shrugged my shoulders and accepted the fact that this 10 will never be interested in a 7 like me
(by then I was thin as a rake, my blonde locks were back and I had had breast augmentation surgery, thus the upgrade).
But for some reason his girlfriend wanted to be friends with me and after a while, I started liking her too. So once again it was the situation where a friend is dating my “Kurt” and I end up dodging eye contact, smiles and alone time in rooms/cars/churches/whatever once more.

When they broke up I was devastated. The two of them had become my best friends, now everything would change. I knew I could never be friends with him because of the fact that my sporadic urges to overpower him might get in the way.
I thought I'd never see him again.

A while after the grieving period had subsided; I was once again, at a friend’s birthday party, sitting at the bar feeling hung-over already and bored with the company, I received a text message from The Man. I froze. Did they get back together? Just read it you piss ant!
“Hey how are you doing?”
“Bored at a birthday party, Brooklyn Rhapsodies suck. How are you doing?”
“Visiting my parents in Centurion.”
“Cool”
Long pause.
“Wanna come over to Rhapsodies in Brooklyn?”
I clenched my jaw and swore inside my mouth like a ventriloquist. Great, he’s going to say no and then I will have one more devastating rejection on my bedpost.
“I’ll be right there”
Whaaaaat?
I waited a little while for the waves of shock and excitement to pass when I got another message and was convinced it was him canceling, but it wasn’t, and as I waited a little while for the shock and starting pains of disappointment to pass, I saw Kurt Cobain walking up the stairs to where I was sitting.

We moved in together after six months, have been living together now for one and a half year. We are the doting parents of three cats and one dog.
We are best friends who fell in love.
Which is why I worry about the future at night.
Please God, don't let either of us die before we can spend the rest of our lives together.

How my Cat Broke my Arm

When I turned six I got a cat for my birthday.

Meraai the First.

A few days living with us, my first 6-year old thought was that maybe she liked vomiting blood.
But my mom, having always been brutally honest, told me that she is probably very sick.
She sadly passed away about a week after getting her.
Seems SPCA rescues are subjected to all kinds of weird bugs from other dogs/cats/birds/janitors/other bugs.
And so Meraai the First bit the dust long before her time.

I plagued my mother for a full week before she agreed to get me another one.
Because (duh) the first one had a manufacturing fault and had to be returned. It’s called reimbursement mom! I did not actually say that because of the possibility of backfire...and death.

So off we went to Danville where people don’t sterilize their pets in mortal fear that they might not breed like hopped up bunny rabbits and overtake the planet.
Danvillians really really really want domesticated animals to re-inhabit the earth.
So as luck would have it, an unwashed family’s cat got frisky with a feral and BOOM:
6 adorable little fluffykooshnoos.

My mom let me pick one out after arguing for 20 minutes that we should take this fine strong little one home.
I then picked the one that she said she thought was the least likely to even survive the car ride home.
But the chosen one only died when I was 23. He he he, I love it when my mother is wrong.

I, on the other hand, almost didn’t survive the car ride home. Little kitty was not impressed with being in a cardboard box inside a metal box that vibrated and rumbled like a rabid dog.
She slid all around the box exaggeratingly with her tiny but flaming sharp claws scratching baby trenches along their path.
While she was doing the hissing and the scratching, and that freaking awful sound a cat makes when it’s really pissed, my mom and I were arguing our next topic.
What to name this one.
She adamantly stood by Japsnoet, which I thought was stupid (but I didn’t say it because sometimes I got a little bit nervous when her eyes went slightly crazy and I didn’t know exactly what she might be capable of…love you mom).
I wanted to call her Meraai the Second. Because it was a nice name for a cat and the first Meraai didn’t live long enough to wear it out. I was only going to grade 1 the next year, so my understanding of bad omens was at best sketchy.
Then my mother did the scariest thing known to kids with mothers. She burst into tears.
I said fine we can name the damn cat Japsnoet but I think it’s STUPID.
Turns out my mother either wasn’t in the mood to maim or she actually wasn’t capable of it. I still think it’s the former.

I was, like, 22 or something, still thinking about the day I made my mommy cry, when I realized she wasn’t crying over the cat’s name but about a bunch of other proverbial shits hitting the proverbial fans, of which I was still blissfully unaware of (cannot stress enough the importance of school, for the “harder lessons in life”).

Meraai the Second (who will, from here on forward, be referred to as “Meraai”) was the funniest looking little kitten I had ever seen. Her ears were bigger than her body, which doesn’t say much because her body was minute. She looked adorable in one of my sister’s roller-skates and only mildly terrified when I dragged her around in it by its shoelace and then later a rope (it was longer so I could go faster)
It was not long after that, that I realized she is a little prankster.
Hiding in dark corners, behind curtains, on wardrobes, inside wardrobes, in bushes, under the bed, just above the bed, in trees and behind my drum set (and she only sat there when she knew my sister and I had just finished watching a scary movie and had to walk down the dark hallway, past my drum set, eerily draped with a white sheet).
Then leaping out at the speed of white lighting; yelling MIAOW at me/us/them/it (she did this to the dogs too, poor things). Scaring the scheisser out of us.

This was a fun combination of hide and seek and tag, only when playing with Meraai I was always “it” which I thought was unfair.
Meraai was the product of a semi-feral but stable (if a bit promiscuous) Mommy cat and a crazy, hands off the wheel, feral alley cat Daddy and boy did she get all the right genes.
She was batshit crazy. But the good kind.
She refused to go down to the kitchen for breakfast (at 06:00) without a chaperone (me) even though she always had a full bowl waiting for her.
She had a series of “tricks” she used in the tedious process of waking me up and getting me out of bed so I can escort her to her meal.

1. The Decibel
First she’ll start climbing loudly in and back out of my bedroom window, ensuring her hip bones bump an appropriate amount of times and that her nails scratch frantically at the sill as much as possible.

2. The Tornado
Then she’ll run in a circle on my bed until my duvet resembled the top of a soft serve swirly ice cream cone.

3. The Stare
This is the part where she will come and sit with her little face awfully close to mine. And then comes… The Stare. You might not think that it could be possible for a staring cat to wake up a semi-comatose person but the success rate is scary.

4. The Lickbite
In the event that The Decibel, The Tornado and The Stare all failed, Meraai brought out the big guns. Say hello to her little friends: Scratchy Tongue and Razor Sharp Teeth.
She will move even closer to my face then slowly and lovingly start licking my nose.
AND THEN BITE IT!

This usually did the trick but if I made her go through the whole rigmarole from start to finish before waking up; I would have to prepare myself for a poke in the eye as soon as I opened it.
For real, she poked me in the eye on more than one occasion.
We would then proceed (me in the lead as if I am driving her limo, she trailing behind as if she is a passenger in her limo), to her little bowl of kibbles where she would sit down neatly, look up at me to see if I am watching and then finally start eating. I had to stand there throughout her whole breakfast before casually being dismissed.

So one gorgeous atumn day when I was eight, Meraai and I were charging through the house jumping on things (mostly her), crashing into other things (only me), when she pulled this unbelievable stunt.
I can’t remember it very well because the awe of the moment blinded me a little but I think it went something like this:

How she did it:
Zoom full speed down hallway.
Bound into my room at the end of it.
Immediately bolt for single bed #1.
Do a back flip from single bed #1 to single bed #2.
Jack-in-the-box onto the desk then fling into the air.
Land perfectly in a martial arts crouch position.

How I did it:
Zoomed full speed down the hallway.
Tripped on the threshold of the room and timbered onto the floor, breaking my left arm in two places.

As I lay there groaning in pain, Meraai passed me on her way out.
Amateur, her disappointed glance said as she lifted her tail and strolled off.
What a class act.

I Dated a Minor Miner

So.....I've been in the clinic twice...the first time was Spring day of 2010.
I remember this clearly because the lady who helped me fill in my forms (I had some trouble writing while crying hysterically) had cake.

I was very afraid that day, not knowing what was going to happen to me and when, how, why.

But festivities started promptly when they ushered me into a small room and gave me a large injection in the ass cheek.
The nurse also wasn't exactly a kind, gentle spirit either.

She was a massive surly sister who I swear wiggled that needle in my poor butt just to punish me for being an out of control...uh...hmmm… thing.

Anyway, after having a series of unpleasant tasks I was free to do nothing with the other kids.
The other kids were patients there too but it rather felt a little bit like high school again. As I walked out I saw little groups of people huddled together, smoking, playing poker or wedgies-time or Let’s Jump the Fence!
I lit a cigarette as I came out and to my left a bunch of guys were lounging against the wall, in the sun, except for one who was sitting on the pavement.
He puffed out a circle of smoke as I passed them, his eyes never leaving me.
As I looked back he smiled at me with the most mischievous face I have ever seen TO THIS DAY!
I just stood there kind of like a smoking retard, trying to look cool and happy about being alone and new.
To make matters worse I had launched into a mad scuffle the previous night to try and appreciate all the luxury items that would not be *erm* served at the clinic, for old time's sake.
As a result I didn't sleep much and walked into the place trying to vomit and cry at the same time. But I'm grateful for the fact that I didn't need to drag myself in with one arm, crying and vomiting as I went.
Like a MANDOWN!!!
So what I am getting at is:
I looked like shit.
I felt like shit.
I.
Was.
Shit.
But the sitting-boy seemed okay with that because he yelled for me to come over there. Ah geeze high school flashback again...only usually people yelled for me to go away from over there, back then...sooooo great success after school then, yay!

He introduced me to all his chums and then gave me a tour of the smoking area.
(here's our patch of grass, there's the table, don't sit on that chair it's broken)

Should I give him a fake name to protect him from the public eye?
Granted the public eye gives a crap about my blog?
Yeah okay.

His name turned out to be Schmauritz Schmeepers and he was 20. I was 26 and married so when we became inseparable best friends in that time, none of that boy/girl stuff interfered.
But later I found out he was actually 18...weird.

Clinic finished up and we all went home to our loving and understanding families.

In the following two years things turned topsy turvy and I suddenly found myself to be a divorcee (why OH WHY must I claim my marital status on the dentist's/doctor's/beautician forms? Do they laugh at us when we leave with our lopsided anaesthetized faces/sore vitaminB12 ass cheeks/perfect eyebrows and bikini lines?
So these days I tick "single". For a while I wrote "life partner" but I noticed lesbians being very kind to me and saying things like "my wife and I are having a braai, would the two of you like to join?"
Maybe I should just get married again, that will solve this conundrum...plus the ring!!!

Okay, backup a little. So my life had taken a cowboy turn for the worst and my feelings felt bad.

Standing in the High Court arguing with a moody judge about how long I've been married:
"So are you telling me you've been married for 3 months?"
"Nah bitch I said 2 years, HELLO! Uhhh I mean Your Majesty …*bow*"

So two days after being in the High Court I went to a whole other clinic. One where they give you delicious tranquilizers, confiscate your blunt-nosed scissors and take your blood pressure while you're conked out.
Unlike the other clinic, they let you keep your phone, I guess they decided if anyone gets creative enough to kill themselves with their cell phone, they must have reeeaaalllyy wanted it.
So I slept and read books and ate when they rang their little crystal bell and smoked and talked shit with the others and took meds then snuck out into the garden to go laugh and push the others into bushes and slept and slept and slept...sometimes in a bush (I got pushed back)
But I NEVER weaved a basket if any of you were wondering.
I did however chase chickens in the rain once with a crazy lady...they were scared.
And even Crazy Lady said this must be the pinnacle of insanity.
Then she went for shock therapy, ouch.

I also took time out of my busy schedule to facebook where, after 2 years, Schmauritz had seen I've divorced,
This was the beginning of a brief...but torrid...affair.

Now before you judge me...he made a very persuasive argument. He said age doesn't matter when it comes to love. He got older people to confirm this concept. He said I'm beautiful...oh flattery thy name is Satan!
I still had 17 days left in the clinic but we were building a wonderful relationship over the phone.
That is after I told him to shove off, I ain't no pedophile! And also read up about cougars and the criteria of being one.
He was by then 20 (I checked) and I was 27…and 13 months.
At first I felt embarrassed but then I got smitten.
I was sitting in a (let's face it) psych ward, beaming from head to toe. New people would ask what the hell I'm doing there and I'd say:
"Depression of course *grin grin grin*"

When I got out I immediately started making arrangements to see him but it would be another week before I go on my country trip which includes Witbank where he...resided...at the time...don't you judge me!
So I kept myself busy that Friday by going to a club where my friend's friend with benefits’ band was performing.
There I ran into Someone. Now there's something you should know about Someone.
Every freakin’ party I've been to where I've had a little bit too much to drink and feeling awfully lonely and there were no bigger fish to fry, I would allow him to hold my hand a little. And kiss me. Nothing else!
For the past 10 years.
Unfortunately this must have come across as something it wasn't because poor Someone fell deeply in love and every time I saw him and the hand-holding commenced, he would get that scary look that people get when you don't really want them and they really want you.
So as I was allowing him to caress my arm, Schmauritz phoned:

Schmauritz: "I'm on my way to Pretoria with some friends!"
Me: "EEEEEEEEEEEH!"
Schmauritz: "Come to Drop Zone" (don't you judge me)
Me: "I'm on my w_"

Battery went flat...I love my iphone but I don't always like it.

So once again I was gone before Someone could even put his arm down.

Sorry Someone.

I got to Drop Zone... I was sober and scared...will write next horror novel: "Alone and Sober on Hatfield Square"...will get $400 000 for it...like Mr King with Carrie.
My phone was completely flat and there were hundreds of people...young (oh so young) people.
At some point I sorta gave up and decided to use the restroom then leave.
BUT as I came out of the restroom (ew) and started weaving through the (very young) crowd, dodging cigarettes, I ran straight into him.

It's been two years.
He was thinner; he had cut his hair and had a great tan.
He looked about 12.

But he smiled at me with delight in his eyes and I felt like a miracle had occurred...in Drop Zone of all places.
You know friends of mine met in Drop zone? Because someone touched her derrière and she kakked out the wrong guy and now they are married and smoochingly happy, smiling on Facebook with their gorgeous little boy.
He's 2...that's definitely too young for me.

Anyhow, Schmauritz smiled, said hi then kissed me. So that was out of the way, thank God for that.

I had not been as "verlief" since The One when I was 19!

But the fact that I was 8 years older than him and considering where we met, people weren't exactly thrilled.
I mean MY family was just glad they could trust me with blunt-nosed scissors again but HIS family saw me as an older, blonder more divorced girl than the one he dumped for me. She was 18, brunette and non-divorced.
I mean how do you compete with that?!

One night as we were trying to sneak into his granny flat (on parent's property) at 02:00 in the morning (that's when "clubs" close in Witbank on Saturdays, pfffft) we got busted...oh geeze I've never been grilled like that in my life!
What's wrong with you?!
Why can't you just leave “The Child” alone?!
Have you had sex?! (yarg!)
What if you get pregnant?
Can't you go to church and find someone your own age?! (tried that, they all loco)

When my friends from Middleburg phoned to find out whether I'm coming there or not I told them I was fighting for my life.
So they called an ambulance!
People really need to take things "in context".

So after making his parents feel more sorry for me than angry at me I left for Middelburg in the rain at 04:00 in the morning.

This was kind of the main theme in our 2 months together. We were like Romeo and Juliette. If both of them were drug addicts and Juliette was an older, scrambled, plastic blonde and Romeo had a heart broken high school girl scout on the side.

So on my birthday he disappeared, never to be heard from again.
Not by me, anyway.
I suppose it is better this way. I felt old next to him. For guys it's cool to get an older woman with giant cans but for women it's humiliating to be seen kissing a kid with a cap on his head.
Plus it cost me a fortune in eye-cream and rejuvenating face stuff.

Oh and did I mention he was a miner?