An end to harder times? (please!)

It is amazing what a difference a little dog named Shelby can have on my life. I have been going along in a world of grey and pain for so long that I am used to it. It is lovely to want to come home after work not having the only thing waiting being a losing battle with alcohol.




Love. Puppy love.



And it is all the more amazing for the loneliness and pain I have been living as the norm. I’ve given up on people a long time ago. I am just different. Too different. It has been my experience that people suck. Especially people who are close, are family. I’d given up on being ever understood for my decisions and as to who I am. But now finally have a companion who makes me feel good, trustworthy and content as I am. I have a reason to look after myself so I can look after Shelby. I have a little dog who I can take for massive walks and runs on days off. I have a little dog looking up to me for leadership, companionship and respect.



A new chapter of my life has begun and it makes me shake my head in wonder at the times of emptiness and despair I have endured.



In the very dark times I told myself suicide was not an option. That things would get better. That they had to and if I could just hold on however I could I would prove it to myself. With the medication I can legally get my hands on it would be a swift and painless end. However I think my great strength and weakness are the same:



There’s a song by The Cars written in 1978. It’s called ‘getting away with it all mixed up’. The lyrics in the song that are like me are…



“Daniel plays his ace, deep inside he knows how to suffer“.



That’s me. The songs about someone who finds themselves in very deep water chasing someone they love, but in the end this person learns to swim like a dolphin. That’s who I want to be. And Shelby is showing me how.

Christmas Eve

Been a long time since I wasnt on my own for Christmas and Christmas eve. But this Christmas I have my little puppy Shelby to keep me company.

I still hate this time of the year. Something is linked to when I drink too much. It's when I feel really bitter and pissed off by my family and its stupid cult that they cant even recognise although the evidence is blunt as a spade in the face. It's in these times drinking get bad. When I am mad at the Christadelphians, when I am waging a war upon them, I have very bad episodes drinking.

Why?

I think it is because no matter what I do I cannot reason with their denial. It is futile. Denial cannot be challenged or reasoned with. A post from a CD:

'I cannot understand the hatred that comes out on these Christadelphian boards!'

Hatred alright. Thats the word. Cause and effect. For every perfect Christo with a smug answer for every that in their mind makes perfect sense. For every Christo who smiles a saccharine smile when they are angry... their is hatred generated. So smug and so perfect. So damn sure everyone elses problems are a result of them leaving the Christos. For every Christo that doesnt give a damn about the environment, their children and family, society and country. There is hatred generated.

I try to reason with them. That is my mistake. Frustration builds to anger. I am not someone who expoldes in rages. I wish I was. Better to vent it and be done with it rather than try to repress it like I do. I've been called a gentle person before. This repression is no good. I just have the worst bouts of drinking right after I have felt furious.

Christmas and New Years is not a good time for it all. I have Shelby now. I can focus on training and exercising her. She is my family. I finally have family over christmas.

The line

At what point do you draw the line?


Is it a conscious thought?

At what point do you decide that you need to cut yourself lose from a family member?

For me it was a subconscious act done many years ago. I couldn’t meet my families expectation of me and neither could I go about pretending that I could and was. The problem with a subconscious act is that consciously you can carry a lot of guilt. As I did before I worked out that I was in a cultist family.



It all comes around for me again at Christmas time. Contact us they say.



Is it selfish to demand that family see things from my perspective before I will have anything to do with them?



Really I think that is the wrong question to ask…



Is it safe for me to pretend that I don’t have a lot of anger and grief?



That there is the important question. No longer will I be bound out of duty to my family. No longer will I feel guilty at being called selfish. I call it survival. And no it is not safe! As much as in their presence I would love to beat their heads together over the Christmas dinner and claim the power of little baby Jesus compelled me to, I wouldn’t. I would sit there and say nothing. But I would be fuming inside at the farce. It would eat me alive… and family would get away with harming me again. Fuck that.



Nope. It’s me and Shelby for Xmas dinner.

God is Dog

Shelby will do well. She will fill the emptiness in me. After all, the bible is so backward and twisted in translation. It's not suprising they spelt the almighty Dog's name backwards.

A mate at last!

It took a bit of time but it finally sank through...

I can go my whole life in bitterness and lamenting my social weaknesses and loneliness. That is not the life I want to lead. Blaming this and that. I am determined that my experience in overcoming the Christadelphian legacy of my family result in recovery from a patheic cult. I do not want to become the bitter twisted person that I could so easily become.

Two days ago I bought a border collie puppy 8 weeks old. This breed of dog demands alot. They run and run all day and still have more in the reserve tank. They are prone to being the dogs winding up in pounds because their owners did not understand that being on a leash all day and neglected gives them some very nasty habits. Barking all day, digging up gardens, escape artists, chewing everything, most of all... untrainable.

I have waited 7 years to be in a position to own another border collie. My first was a cross border. My best mate ever and it broke my heart to leave her. These dogs need a bare minimum of an hour run time each day. I have no one in my life, like my first bordere collie I can give her 2 hours average after or before work and get some quality, 'I am not alone because I am with my best mate' time out of it.

Its what I need.

And unlike other suburban owners I can and have trained a loyal border collie in suburbia almost as obedient as their country counter parts. I know the challenge.... its what I need.

I know loneliness... its not what I need.

Somehow it snuck up on me. Months of bad feelings and ranting. Then early this week I woke up to the fact everything is now in place.... I can get a border collie. I've waited years for this, knowing that I wasnt in a place where I can have a dog for life and give it the dedication it needs. And now was never a better time for me to get a border collie. It is very hard being alone... so I'm not going to be anymore.

These dogs have the capacity for great loyalty, if loyalty is given to them. They have the herding instinct of wolves, refined through generations till the border collies have 'the eye' where they stare down their target, intending for the target to back off and run, all the while itching for defiance from their target, when they will move even closer to control the engagement, making it physical if need be. They make great farm dogs and are bred for this sole purpose. They are running herding machines without the blood lust of nasty dogs like rottwielers.

The trick will be to find another outlet for these instinct for my border collie. Chasing swallows, sea gulls, frisbee. We shall see. Finally I can look forward to coming home after work and not being alone!

And with a breed like this I have a great challenge to occupy my other wise 'alone' time.

I'll pick her her up tomorrow, cant wait!

Tired

It took two days to sink in. (After some members of my family trying to contact me). Frustration, grief, anger, despair. Frustration because once again I look like the loner who doesn’t care a whit about family, and keeps rejecting family advances. It makes me FURIOUS! And all my rage can go no where… I have to bite down on it and keep it inside me… knowing that my lack of contact just moves me further and further away from family and is another indicator to my family of just how uncaring and guilty I am.




I tried with all of them. My mother, my father, my sibling. Rejected each time and told I was wrong about how I grew up and how bad the Christadelphians are. Told to feel guilty for thinking such a thing.



It is NOT OK for me to pretend I am not hurt and push down the anger. For my teen years my mother was a mask of emotional detachment. I remember that mask so well. Its flip side was the one she put on doing her Christadelphian duties. A lie, who was she really? Not the cultist, she has been just an extension of her crazy mother and father who tried to start their own cult. My father was outright belittling and teasing and my sibling caught up in their own Christadelphian world in which they functioned well with many friends. They grew up with the viewpoint of my parents about me… sullen, uncommunicative, down right disparaging of Christadelphian peers.



And I am tired. Tired of being a social delinquent, a loner. I look back at the years and I feel heart break. For so long it has just been me. Everyday just me, alone in a crowd, every year, every decade. It is very hard to have hope that this will change. I’ve tried and at times tried very hard… but things just go to pieces.



It is hard to have trust coming from a cultist family. It is hard to have good self esteem when you reject the cult from early teens. It is just carnage. A train wreck that grows as the years pass.

family

My family just don’t get it. I am not about to admit I have been shameful and ill behaved, and my family are not going to accept that I have a right to be angry. They reject how things have been and are for me. Right now a feeling like a streak of anger and grief passes through me. How can I have any sort of relationship with them without needing to say how things have been for me, while not having my viewpoint rejected. Without validation this anger and grief will just eat me alive. I’d be TNT on no fuse what so ever. Just thinking about it makes me furious. They don’t understand that I am dangerous to myself by being around them. If I were another person I would ‘fly off the handle’ and lay into them. But I am not. I am a nice guy and just end up hurting myself so that others can be happy. Well not this time. I am worth something too.

It really really hurts me that I have to continue to maintain my distance from family. I foolishly thought that things would be okay with my family when I came out and admitted the problems with alcohol and depression I was having. How stupid was I. I just gave them a scapegoat.