In the Lady Garden...

Bah - have I caught you all out again?

Naughty, naughty peoples. Okay... I'll 'fess. I did it deliberately just to get you here.

I have spent most of today, in between the rain showers, in the garden. Ripping out weeds, cutting off branches, culling, tilling, working out my frustrations.

I am pissed. Actually, I am tense and because I am tense I am pissed. And so off to the garden I run, taking out the boundless frustrations on the rubbish which grows where it should not.

Tomorrow I have to have the last of my scans. I know, logically, that it is unlikely to be anything, but we all know that being sensible is not the most obvious of my attributes. Okay, not really one at all. I don't like this sort of stuff, puts me on edge.

And to add to this, a mother at the school has decided I am to be the focus or distraction of her rage because her life sucks. At least, that is the interpretation I am getting from others. All because of a Facebook comment, taken the wrong way (personally), explanations, clarification and apologies all ignored. FAAARRRKKK - I thought I had left primary school a long time ago, but no. This nearly 50 year old woman has absolutely fixated on me being the root of all evil. Personally I think it is an altogether different type of root she needs and it ain't the kind I was ripping out of the garden today! Hasn't been an issue, but this morning I didn't realise I was parking near her... until Boy 2 said: "Mum, what have you done to that woman, she looks like she wants to kill you!" Look across, and yep, gaze of death glaring through my windscreen.

Had to laugh when I explained what had transpired in brief and he responds with "Great, another person who is in dire need of mental health." And they wonder why I say he is my mini me? And no, I didn't go off about her or her issues, merely said she had decided not to talk to me anymore after the FB comment and told him what it was. Because it seriously was not bad, and it was about special needs which he understands the implications of.

And honestly, most other days I would have laughed it all off, but this is not most other days... it is the day before. So I am allowed to overreact! After all, I am nothing if not a  

PS Garden is gutted. Totally.

Life is Unfair.

I have a Billy Joel song playing again and again on an endless loop in my head. Only the good die young.

It is a strangely upbeat song for someone sinking into the darkness.

These are the lyrics which echo in my mind after hearing Big Boy's words when I rang him with the news... "Why do the nice people in this world suffer these tragedies and trials, yet the toxic nasty ones go forth without nary a ripple of discomfort?"

We have been friends for over twenty years, I can even pinpoint the date we met. 8/8/1988 - the day I began work at a large investment insurance company. Even through divorce, distance and life's ever changing cycle of demands we have always remained friends. We talk weekly. She and her husband flew in for my 45th bash a few years back. We have shared laughter, tears, anger and sadness. We have had drunken nights, saved kittens under cars, danced at each others wedding.

Friends. The genuine thing.

Today I received a text. In February they diagnosed her with a type of pre-leukaemia with a name so big I could not begin to pronounce it. It was the day she was due to have her large bowel removed after many years of issues. They did not go ahead, obviously. And in the months that have flown by my words of frustration and anger at the lack of action or treatment whilst the medical big wigs pondered this medical dilemma which is my friend, have echoed down the phone line.

"Do you want me to fly in? I am good at kicking medical butt after Wise Woman's fiascos."

"Not yet, I'll tell you if I need you."

"You sure?"

"Yep. For Now. You can be my secret weapon."

"Or your loose cannon, heheheh."

"That too."

Finally they decided to go ahead with her op... but today I received the text.

"It has developed into acute leukaemia. Op off, chemo starting next week."

I have a huge solid knot of fear pitted in my stomach. My gut instinct is sending huge red pulses of angst through out my soul. Those fucking idiots - they had caught it so damn early and yet failed to act. Now I am scared it is too late. I am terrified we will lose her. I am helpless, frustrated and angry.

And if I am feeling this way, how in hell must my gorgeous girl feel?

For God's sake, her girls are only so very young. She is a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend. This is not right. It is so very wrong.

Only the good die young, and she is pure goodness to her very core. Please let it not be so this time, please, please, please...

The Black Panther.

I have a panther, a sleek, black panther. It is not a black dog, oh no. I also have a black dog that slinks into my life, tail between its woe-is-me, quivering, shaky legs. It whimpers and whines, pitifully pawing until it draws me down to the floor to sit in an empathetic haze of misery for hours, days or even weeks. 

No, this is a creature of far greater ferocity. Sometimes it lies sleeping, content to rest camouflaged by the shadows of life.

 

Until injustice, discrimination, or the pure evil which seeps from the internally putrid will awaken it from its slumber with an almighty roar. Rousing it from a supine sprawl to stir, wanting, craving to pounce. Yes, my midnight shadow is an animal of black fury, justice and retribution. It is full of fire and fight, ferociously fierce in its defence of all those beloved in my heart. It leaps with rippling rage into my head from the slightest of provocation, willing me to release it to tear, mame, and shred with powerful, unforgiving, dark, dripping jaws.

I am forced to hold the leash tight, restraining my animal lest it do irreparable damage, keep it caged until all other options are depleted. And then, only then do I unclip the collar and finally permit those who transgress to feel the hot panther breath enveloping them as they face the big cat in full attack.

When Lori wrote of the battle to break with her black dog it struck home, and roused me to post of my dark creature. For whilst her black dog, like so many, is full of pain and bleakness, my midnight brute resonates with wrath and suppressed violence. Held in check by small, slender bars of logic, attempting to contain this living instrument of restitution.

Those held locked in my black panther's dark, steady gaze need to be afraid. Be very afraid.

One hand waving...

I have awoken engulfed in rage. I am angry, really angry. Triggered by an inanimated object's breakdown (my computer crashed and lost a lot of important financials as it was in the midst of a long, complicated process by one of the programs), my outrage has turned to other events over the last few weeks.

I am sick to death of the two-faced liars of this world walking away without fallout from their actions, I am tired of being made out to be the bad guy, I hate that people are so gullible as to believe the falsities that dribble venomously from tainted lips. I am so sickened by the actions and nastiness of others that I am succumbing to the temptation of joining them in the abyss.

I have all their secrets. I am a ticking bomb sliding uncontrollably towards detination. And I have proof of their words, deeds and lies.

I do not want to be like this. It is against my own personal code of honour to betray even the most insidious villian, especially as it will hurt those who are being sucked in by their untruths. I am not like them, twisted, warped, so caught up in their web that the lines of fact and fiction are perpetually entangled in their own bitter brains. But it is so tempting. And I am so angry.

There are times I know I am quite capable of turning into the very thing I despise. This is one of them. I do not like this.