Honesty Entering 2015

What is a blog if it isn't honest? I think a lot of us bloggers set up an account, brag about our outfits or latest beauty products, share bits of our materialistic lives and gush about how fabulous and glitzy we can be (I'm just generalizing here by the way. There are many of you that I absolutely love to keep up to date with that have actual interesting things to say!) 

Well, it's a new year in 1 day and 11 hours and I have something to admit. I haven't been honest with any of you.

You see... 2014 was a pretty shitty year for me for lack of better words. In fact, they are the perfect words - because it was shitty. Yet here I was trying to coax you into trying some silly horse shampoo or publishing a post about buying a pair of bad quality shoes every month to show to you like it really even mattered?! 

There were a small collection of 'real' posts I suppose - although I never really gave too much away. For example, there was the time back in June when my best friend in the world left and I wrote THIS.

Then there was a nice little slice of positive words to myself HERE shortly after that. 

I even posted a video clip back in August where I was in tears after being mucked around by yet another smelly git of a man... watch that NOW.  

I think the idea of posting real life struggles and perils is such a great idea in the blog world because we all have them but we try so hard to blanket them with all this bullshit. 

So here, in short, is a small summary of what REALLY happened in 

2014.... 

It was my first year as an Auntie. 

Jenson Charles Preston Wright was born on the 26th December 2013. 

Being an Auntie is incredible. It's a love like no other and this little guy has stolen my heart. 

I got a tattoo of cherry blossoms on my foot to symbolize mortality when my dad was given three days to live. 

I got my first novel, Walk With Me, published and it sold like hot cakes. The experience of publishing it was incredible but hard as hell. It did give me so much inspiration to complete my second novel entitled, The Other Woman, though. 

I had my first freelance journalist gig - which was a HUGE milestone in my career as a writer. It was for a site called Bored.com and it was about unique ways to wrap up your Christmas presents. 

As a writer, you can't help but feel so incredibly stoked when you see your own work published! So to see not only my first novel but also my first article published in 2014, that was pretty damn cool. 

You can check the article out HERE. 

I've been battling with living back at home with my folks - who although try to deny it, are big lovers of getting absolutely pickled every night in front of the television. 

I don't know how life could ever end up like that... sitting on the couch, slowly passing out from too much alcohol while watching mindless junk on the TV. 

I'm scared of that happening to me..... and I am willing to do just about anything to prevent it. 

I get angry and grumpy with them and become a terror of a person. I bitch and moan and shout at them... me... their daughter... the one they used to rock to sleep at night and sing lullabies to. 

I get so churned up inside seeing them like that. 

If it was once a week, on a weekend... then why not? But it is every single bloody night. But as hard as I try to tell them they have a problem... they just don't stop. 

I don't know if they ever will. 

But I still love them both... dearly.

As for friends..... well... to be honest with you it's been a pretty lonely year. 

I've never been great at making friends. 

Back in high school I was the biggest freak show and nerd you could get... of course it affects you. 

I have a few wonderful close friends like Lucien and Ashley... but the others seem to come and go. 

A lot of the time I make great friends but then they move to a new town or to a different country and slowly we lose contact. It's how it works I suppose.... but I have been needing to find a 'group,' if you will..... 

It sucks so much to see all these photographs on Facebook of girls nights and barbecues, going out and having FUN. 

I have them too - at the end of every month I show you photo's of me enjoying my evenings with people.... but do those people really care or know me? Not really.... not if I'm honest.

I miss having friends - friends that keep in touch and check in on how you are. Friends who make the effort and go the extra mile to let you know they are there for you. 

I don't have many of them left anymore.

Surfing? There hasn't really been much of that. I have probably done it a handful of times this year - and actually, as I write this, I am struggling away with some seriously stiff muscles from a couple of hours in the water on Sunday. I caught about three good waves but I definitely need to pick it back up again if I have any hope of surfing Indonesia in 7 months time!!! 

That's the OTHER thing... those of you who follow me regularly (thanks for that by the way!) will obviously know how passionate I am about travel. 

There was non of that in 2014.... barring a few little jets to the cities in South Africa, which I'm not really sure counts... but at least I was on a plane. 

There's something about being way up there in the sky.... and it's not just the fact that the altitude makes drinking wine just that much more fun! No... it's knowing that when you touch ground again it will be some place else....

I get SERIOUS cabin fever. 

I'm a nomad... a gypsy... or as my mother likes to call me, a bit of a waif and a stop-out............... (thanks mum). 

I go bat-shit crazy without experiencing the joys of a new country and culture. 

I could have traveled, hell, I've saved up enough! But I'm saving up so that next year can be my travel year... I have big plans and slowly but surely they are all coming into fruition. That's the only thing keeping me sane right now... knowing soon, I'll be somewhere else on the map, with a rucksack on my back and a passport in my hand. 

Now here's the real deep one....

I slit my wrist. Yip. Now there's some honesty for you. 

I had an absolute breakdown - went on anti-depressants and started suffering from major anxiety. 

Why did I do it? There are many reasons. 

Depression is a hard pill to swallow on top of the CiLift or whatever happy drug you're taking to help you out.

I think more often than not, we are so afraid to show who we really are... to show our weaknesses and fall-backs because we are petrified of judgement. 

But you know what??? Judge me if you want to. I don't care anymore. 

I got weak and I fell. I'm left with a stupid scar across my left wrist from something I did because I was ashamed with myself. Why???

Because I nearly killed someone. 

I got involved with a married man - fell in love with him, adored him, almost bloody worshiped him.... and he loved me back. At least I think he did. But then his wife found out and she didn't take it well. Who can blame her??? It's the worst thing I have ever done - to have continued something like that.
I should probably clarify that I didn't actually KNOW he was married until I was already to deep in into the doomed hole.... I really didn't. If I had, things would have ended up VERY differently. 

She slashed her wrists... badly. It wasn't just a plea for attention, but a genuine suicide attempt - and when he told me about it, it gave me such a fright. 

I was devastated. How could I have done that to someone??? And so I wanted to feel that pain. Somehow I thought that if I punished myself I could make it better. I fell back into a depression so deep and hurtful that I was experimenting with drugs and harming myself so much.... not letting anyone in to help. No one even really knew what I was doing.
One of the reasons I finally moved back home to my folks, was because I was having a problem with drugs. I told my folks everything. What I'd thought was just fun experimental teenage shit actually got really ugly......... and I made the huge decision to come clean to them.... and for AGES I had done so well at cleaning myself up... but after this happened.... I fell down again. 

Falling into this black abyss of depression and self-loathing very nearly killed me. 

I tried to apologize - I tried to make amends. But how can you ever really do that? How does someone ever forgive you for that? And how do you forgive yourself???

That weight has been resting heavily on my shoulders all throughout 2014 and I don't know when it will go away - or if it ever will. 

That story is what my book, The Other Woman is based on. 

Have you ever done anything so awful that you don't know if you could ever forgive yourself? If so... how did you overcome it? 

And lastly - I started dating the handsome bearded fellow... Sam. 

I think what is different about us is that I actually finally stopped caring. That sounds like the most unromantic thing I've ever said but let me explain....

Throughout my life, I have been with over a handful of absolute knob-heads... which in no way means I am any kind of a Saint... but from drug-addicts to beaters, manipulators and cheaters, even obsessive and possessive. Throw a couple of crazies in there and you've spelled out my life story! I can tick them all off. So eventually, I just felt like my heart had been so destroyed that I genuinely couldn't love again. 

I tried. 

I had one or two absolute GEMS that I tried DESPERATELY hard to love. It wasn't them. It was me.... as cliche as that sounds. I just couldn't open my heart - though I tried so hard it seemed like I did love them. I tricked myself and I tricked them into thinking I was in love. As evil as that sounds, I really didn't mean it to be. 

So when Sam came around I was literally done. 

Over. 

Ca-put with love. 

We went out a few times... both of us fresh out of relationships and feeling a bit lost... and he reawakened a certain spark in me that had been missing for so long. 

He challenged me. He wasn't over-the-top romantic or nauseatingly mushy. He was real... strong and manly.. yet so incredibly gentle. The definition of a big teddy bear (OK... Maybe more of a grizzly bear)... but he's my bear. 

It was the first time I entered into something with all my cards on the table. I told him EVERYTHING... and by everything, I mean everything. What did I have to lose anyway???? And Sam accepted it. He chose to love me with all of my flaws and imperfections.. the real ones. The ones that we try to hide away from even those that are closest to us. 

Have I found the guy I am meant to spend the rest of my life with?

Who knows - I'm not claiming to know the future. 

But I am happy - and I make him happy - and together we are growing and learning and being... as we should be. 

It's as simple as that.  

So that was pretty much my year. 

Not all it seemed to be cracked up to be from so many of my showy posts, was it??? 

We all have things behind the scenes. 

It's called real life... and I think we need to start facing it. 

Stop hiding it.

It's almost as bad as photogshopped models. They DO have stretch marks and cellulite and a bit of a wobble.... but people edit themselves so much... it's such a lie. 

This is life... now stop editing yours and worrying about being judged. 

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter... and those who matter don't mind!" - Dr Seuss. 

See you all in the New Year.

Peace, love and harmony to all.... and to all, a goodnight.