You say you want a relationship with me
But I don’t feel your invitation is genuine
If you don’t reveal more of what goes on in your mind
If you don’t open up and share your heart with me
There is a solid wall you have built up
I do not have the power to unlock those gates
Every now and then I have the slightest peak at what you hide
But it is only you who can choose to open yourself to me
___________
This was in repsonse to the picture prompt from Sue Vincent…I wrote it while waiting for my friend to arrive. And now I am heading out to feast on cake and drink copious amounts of tea.
I have been in the habit of writing since I was a young child, but not stories, and certainly not poems. Even at school I struggled with that kind of writing. I could churn out essays easily, but making up a story or poem was not natural to me.
I have had shorts spells of keeping a journal. I went through eighteen months of illness requiring several surgical procedures about twelve years ago. Keeping a journal helped me at that time. Also, when I was twenty four and I split up with my teenage sweetheart who had been courting me for years. I do believe that the letter writing and the occasional journal keeping have shaped my style of writing.
Since I started blogging, I have read the work by many other writers and have loved their poetry and flash-fiction and longer stories. I have made a few attempts myself. I must admit I find I often revert to writing about a real-life experience, instead of making up something imaginary. But I have decided I will keep trying to develop better writing skills, and especially with regards to short flash-fiction posts.
I am really looking forward to spring and summer ahead. I want to be outside as often as possible. I will take a little notebook and pen and if I have any ideas or see anything that inspires me, I will jot them down and work on some stories to keep my site light-hearted and joyful. And all of my stories will have happy endings – because those are the type that I prefer.
What had been supposed to be a dream holiday, a luxury cruise on a private boat with a group of girls I had been friends with since school, had turned out to be a disaster! When our boat sprung a leak and began to sink, we had to abandon it and all of our luggage!
“Michelle, your life is more important than Chanel sunglasses!”
It was Claire who seemed to notice the unusual appearance of the group that had helped us onto the beach. She remarked in rather a loud voice that they must be some gimmick the local tourist board had thought would look authentic to tourists. We had no idea at that point that we were far far off the tourist track.
Lucy started to ask if they could help us. She said we needed to contact our travel rep and wondered if anyone had a mobile phone on them. There did not seem to be much response to her questions. She started asking for directions towards the nearest town or resort. After some time, our frustrations built and we decided that the group who had met us were determined to continue their act and were not going to help us. We all agreed that we should start walking away from the beach but we could not see any signs of a built-up area. Still, we were pretty fed up of the group who had not responded to our requests for help to contact our travel rep.
As we walked the group followed us and then began to crowd around us. It was intimidating at first, but we were all rather shocked as they started to lift us up on and carry us on their hands. Although it was strange, we were so tired after the swim from our boat to the shore, it was rather nice to be carried. They carried us along tracks that were surrounded by dense layers of lush jungle. We hoped they were taking us towards the town so that we could get the help we asked for.
But rather than a built-up town or hotel resort, the group led us to what looked like a village of mud-huts.
Although, we were concerned about our whereabouts and how we would find our way get some help so that we could travel back to England, at this point we were just tired and so grateful for the delicious stew on a bed of vegetables and grains that was brought to us by some of the villagers. It was so good to have some warm food. We were given some tropical fruit juice to drink. As darkness fell, we were taken to one of the huts, where comfortable beds made of something as soft as heather and adorned with jungle flowers were waiting for us. All six of us talked about how the next day we should try to find out how to get to the nearest built up town. But we were so tired we quickly fell asleep.
…Well, that was our first 24 hours of what would become our new home. I can’t explain it except that the situation kind of grew on us. These men were cooking for us, making up fresh scented beds for our hut every evening, they entertained us, they taught us about the beautiful fruitage, flora and fauna in the jungle around us. They took us to stunning waterfalls and plunge pools were we could bathe in seclusion. They were only ever respectful and kind. They treated us like princesses. It just grew on us. We realized we were happier here than we had been in England.
In fact we started to feel as if we had stumbled across paradise. We felt so healthy and so happy. The villagers who had met us on that beach were able to help us discover the wonders of the beautiful island we had been shipwrecked on. They were the loveliest men we had ever known.
In fact super friendly. It turned out that the tribe on the island are all male. For some reason all the females on the island kept giving birth to sons and no daughters. So now they have become an exclusively male tribe. The men were hoping we would choose to stay and settle. They made sure we wanted for nothing, thinking of our every comfort and pleasure. They never forced us to stay, We just gradually realized we had never been so happy and healthy. We wanted to stay there. Over the following years each one of us girls developed friendships with one of the villagers. One by one each of the six of us fell in love with a man of this secluded village and we insisted on a marriage ceremony. It was not long before the pitter patter of little ones (including little girls) was heard.
Michelle – Ghana
I have grown up in a very loving family. Our family were loved by many others. We had everything we needed and more. We were not well off financially. We were squeezed into a council house. But nonetheless, we never went without food or the things we needed. We had lots of fresh air. We had plenty of books from charity shops. We were rich in love. We thrived. We are still thriving as adults because of that childhood I am sure. For many years I have felt full of purpose.
The only time I found myself overwhelmed with the sad things in life, rather than the many joys, was three and a half years ago. I was going through the motions of eating and sleeping and showering and dressing…and feeling utterly lost. That was after over two, almost three, years of intense stress, mainly from what turned out to be bullying (although, at the time, I did not realize that was what was happening) and then just as I was reaching my breaking point, I was the victim of a very serious crime.
Those first few weeks afterwards I was rather numb to everything. I never doubted there being a purpose to life, but I was rather overwhelmed with pain and trauma. I could not think clearly, I could not feel – my emotional state was in some kind of spasm. But as I look back, that stage of feeling lost and grieving was a natural reaction to what had happened. I feel glad I was allowed to take my time to work my way through it. Nobody else was going to be able to force me through the emotions that came over the coming weeks. Even since I have returned to work and a busy life in London, I still have my wobbly moments. But the sense of purpose I have, and have had since I was a child, is a huge stabilising factor in dealing with any kind of pain.
Of course there is a point, a purpose to life. It’s not mysterious or unfathomable. Why did my parents decide to have children? Why did I spend so long pouring over recipe books, trying to find wonderful dishes to make and cakes to bake for Goldfinch? Why does a giver give a surprise gift to someone else?
If you don’t think it is possible that life is a gift from a giver, then I have no idea how you would ever answer the question above. But if you have any concept of a Creator who has a purpose, then it is not hard to answer that question. As soon as you start thinking about it from the giver’s point of view. The giver of a gift cannot force the person to whom it was given to enjoy the gift properly. The giver cannot force the recipient not to misuse it. The giver cannot force the receiver to be grateful and to show appreciation for how incredibly precious it is.
The question is why are there sad, bad, devastating things that can make life so hard today? He answers that question openly and honestly. It is not complicated. I have no idea why some people try to complicate it. It’s pretty clear that this beautiful earth should be the home of a very happy, healthy human family who thrive within loving relationships. A human family who live in harmony with the other amazing creatures on this planet. As any gardener knows, you can make a patch of earth a little pocket of paradise. The entire earth has the potential for that. However, something has gone wrong. It’s quite beyond us to fix all of the damage. So now the giver has promised to fix the damage.
Recently, I was walking into a tube station here in London, and I saw a lady, who looked about seventy years old, standing at one side of the entrance. On the other side of the entrance was a young woman who looked about twenty years old. Both looked very happy. I see people like them all over London. They both had a stack of little pamphlets they were holding out. So I automatically presumed I could take one. I chose to take one from the seventy year old lady, because I admired her and her beautiful smile. When I had a look at it, once I was sat down on the train, I was so glad I had taken it. It was called “Is Life Worth Living?” It’s long gone now, in my recycling box. But I looked for it online just now and found it.
Looking at the online version, I noticed a video link which took me to a little gem of a video. It touches on why we have this beautiful gift and why things are not all good today. If you don’t think it is possible that there is a Creator or God, you might want to give it a miss (I respect we all see things differently) but I thought it was very well made, and very clear and straightforward and frankly gorgeous. They nailed it! I think even a child could grasp the point.
When we were in Romania, the apartment we stayed in had a padded toilet seat. Every-time you sat down on it, the air escaped and it made a noise like a whoopee cushion. We did not see any other padded toilet seats anywhere else in Romania, only that one – but it always makes us laugh when we recall the strange noises that came from the bathroom every time anyone went in there to ease nature.
We saw some very funny things in West Africa. I am still working on posts about my time out in Ghana and all we saw. There were some toilets there which were kind of rustically built for use by volunteers who were working on a large project. A large bench with holes in – a bit medievil style. For modesty they had put a partition between each hole, creating separate cubicles. However the cubicles had no doors. Anyone queuing could see someone sitting over the hole. During our time there, some of the British women said it would be appreciated if the cubicles could be made a little more private. So someone had the idea of putting some netting up instead of a door. However, they only hung a short amount of netting. We realized that although the netting obscured the head and shoulders of whoever was inside the cubicle, everything waist down was still exposed.
There was a time I promised to drive somebody else’s car over two hundred and fifty miles across the country. Only it broke down after I was around fifteen minutes into the journey. I called the motor recovery agency the owner was registered with. I ended up being transported across the country with the car on the back of flat back trucks. But because they are not allowed to drive more than one hundred miles, it was three trucks, three different drivers who relayed the car and me back to the owner. What a night!
There was also the time in the Isle Of Man when a man (who I presumed had been drinking all afternoon) wearing a tartan hat and orange wig and a mini-kilt jumped on our car and revealed what he was not wearing when he sat on the window screen.
Wherever we go – you are in your walking encyclopedia mode. It’s taking the charm out of my life.
I don’t want to be told all about the physical attributes of light particles and how they travel when I am gazing at a sunset. I just want to enjoy the view without a science lesson.
Darling…I have decided that for my own sanity I need to go away for a while. I am going to stay with my sister. I am leaving you until you can prove to me that you have figured out how to switch off and relax for a while. I love you, but you are driving me to despair.
There are those who suffer a kind of prison.
Jack, there has been a lot of damage done. I don’t understand what has been going on between you and I, it’s confusing and frustrating. This extraordinary pressure on whether a romance would develop was unbearable. I was never against a romance developing. When you told me you loved me, I did not know how to react, I didn’t really believe you. But don’t you think we should both forget that for now and go back to building a basic friendship?
What happened to you? Why did you go from making me feel we were true friends to shunning and slandering me? Those words did so much damage. I would give anything to go back to the way things used to be.
Can we put all the damage away and agree that this should not have happened, but that we are both on the same team, working towards the same objectives, and support each other? I don’t know if you realize it, but the silence from you, the silence has done more damage than the words.
I don’t know what words and looks of love and peace would win you over. The past has passed us by, but it’s the present and the future I am interested in. I cannot enjoy my present or my future thinking that you do not regret what happened, that you are triumphant at my suffering. I’m afraid I say too much here.
Many of my close friends and family blame Jack for so much of what happened to me. I have not had a sense of blame as such. Just raw hurt. I am not interested in blame. I think I know what Jack said and didn’t say. I think I know what Jack did and didn’t do. I think I understand what he shares some responsibility for, and what he really ought to regret. But he was not to know just how out of control the situation would become. I love him far too much to blame him for things that were not at all his fault. Still it would be of comfort to receive kindness and empathy in some form from him.
The past has passed. But I want to be back in my purposeful life, rather than just existing here. I can’t go back if he is going to carry on behaving in the same way that led me to the despair that caused me to go to that park on my own late at night.
I know some might not want to read about another’s faith or beliefs, I totally respect that, so if you want to bail out of reading about mine (well, I will never know – so that’s alright!) please feel free to give my post a miss. The last thing I want to do is to annoy anyone else who has a different outlook or view of the future to me. I am all for peace with any other bloggers!!
When I was a child, I became very picky about the kind of books I would read. My Dad bought me scores of books from charity shops, many of them written by Enid Blyton. I enjoyed many of them, especially the adventures the children encountered. But anything with fairies, magic, or anything I deemed as fantasy (as apposed to fiction) I rejected. I wanted to read about real things. As a child, I wanted my parents and others to be straight with me. I had many questions I was perplexed about and wanted to understand why things are the way they are.
I always loved reading about animals. Stories with animals such as “Black Beauty” and the stories from Beatrix Potter were favourites to me. I think most of us have yearned from a very early age to know more about animals and for them to be much more a part of our everyday life. As a child, it concerned me greatly that people could have a harmful effect on animals, and it also concerned me that animals could harm both each other and humans. I wished all were gentle and at peace. I think many today feel enormous frustration that human activity has meant disaster for so many other creatures, not to mention the serious injury humans have rendered to each other.
I mentioned in a post I published last year (
In addition to my own reading, we had a teacher at school who held a story time around three o’clock in the afternoon shortly before we all went home. Almost every story time, one of the children in our class would ask her to read from the big golden story book she had, which was all stories from the scriptures but made easier to read for children. We all had our favourite stories from her golden book. My favourites were all about the future of the earth. I thought the pictures were so beautiful.
Caramel 