Confessions
I have an amazing capacity to be petulant, stroppy, demanding and needy. I’m not high maintenance so long as I am feeling the love. If the love disappears or isn’t forthcoming then I definitely get a little testy.

So what is it about expectations that make them so deeply entrenched in the sub-conscious, so hard to shift and so impossible to appropriately articulate?

I’ve expoused my sorry love life to a couple of people who asked this week. One told me today that she felt sad for me when she left. Horrified, I smiled, choked and made a quick exit .. pride is such that the weakness of being pitied floored me for a moment or two. I’ve never thought of it that way, but I suppose that people must. And they probably shake their heads and sigh, thinking of all the things I know about myself that make me so difficult. So I sigh too, because I am so unwilling to change and yet so desperately desire difference.

I recognise the growing restless angst before I form the cutting phrase designed to chaff, I hear myself thinking through the actions that would be completely appropriate if my life was a black comedic movie, but it’s not, and I’m again surprised, at all the childhood I skipped over arriving in small bites under my surface skin, scarring all that’s underneath.

I so want to be gentle, gracious and easy. I know I am so hard, challenging and demanding. Difficult to love I’m sure, even in friendship to meet the need I seem to generate for myself .. yet I can barely remember a time of articulating it. I disappoint myself with my lack of ability to be truly honest with myself.

Similarly though – I found out today that my sister has been told what I’ve been told over the years about the ‘obvious effect of my parents’ divorce’. I’m not sure what I think about that to be honest.