No more drama

I wrote this poem on Jan 6th this year.

HER CROWN

I thought my mother was building a pergola
but as all knowledgable mothers do endure to do
It is a crucifix she fusses over
and tutting over her barbed crown
"What a blasted nuisance
dammit the fiddly thing
kids!"
She is going to martyr herself on the patio
freshly weeded
She told me so
"Hold the ladder
and shut your mouth"
And in her field of scolds
She thrashes against the ropes
of her own suffrence.
She screams "Why me?"
barbed and chic in THORNS.



My eldest children have been taken away from me by their concerned father as my mother has filled him with horror stories of my perverted love for a transexual and false stories of me abandoning them.

I LAST SAW THEM ON SATURDAY MORNING. I WAS UPSTAIRS WHEN THEY WENT FOR THEIR SATURDAY CONTACT WITH THEIR DAD, NEITHER SAID GOODBYE.

Mum was banging on the door at 9am this morning, I lay on the sofa and waited for her to go away, I am fearful I will physically assault her.
This morning at 9.21 I have a message on my ansaphone
"Tillie, please will come down to the house, I know I've told some lies over the last few days, I put my hands up to that, what we need is an interim residency order, we need to go and see my lawyer and we can get the children BACK...."
I hung up the phone at that point and stood laughing and crying... yesterday their Stepmother stood in my house and looked on as I put my kids clothes into bin bags, and I knew that her life was now going to be unbelievably difficult, she will be the only breadwinner in her house with 6 people to feed. I could see in her eyes her pain.

My mother through her hideous exaggerations has torn apart my family, will push my ex-husbands wife to the limit, hurt all my children....my head is in angry turmoil... but I have had enough. I am going to walk away, leave the kids with their Dad, I know he will love them and I am going to take this chance to go into proper recovery for my late night drinking and heal my life once and for all. I want NO MORE DRAMA, I WANT PEACE. I WANT THE CHILDREN TO HAVE STABILITY. I am 20 miles away from them and can feel their pain, I do not want them pulled from pillar to post, my mother is dangerous, we are all going to walk away. There is no making amends. There is no more forgiveness. I am not going to through another custody battle. We all need quiet and to feel safe.



I hate drama, lies, shouting, name calling, I've known too much of it.
When asked what I wanted to be truly happy, it was always the same thing, an older me in bed reading the The Sunday Times and Angela beside me (obviously having made me a cup of tea), knowing the children were safe and happy. I have no interest in money, investments, flash holidays, it means nothing to me, my idea of happiness is inner tranquility and to be with those I love.

My Mum has repeated this pattern all her life, she abandoned her mixed up truculent teenage son with a broken leg in a huge unfurnished mansion in the early seventies and then never spoke to him for over 35 years, she said he was trouble...I don't know how he was trouble, he spent his life avoiding her, his warning to me was the same each time I saw him, "avoid her, she is dangerous and relishes in other peoples suffering, she takes joy in punishing others, she was sadistic to us as children and she is sadistic to you as an adult". I have a horrible memory of my mother, I would have been around 6 or 7, my brother is sitting on the sofa crying and I am lying on my belly on the floor, she is telling us both to shut up, I am in terrible pain as she is digging a verruca out of the bottom of my foot with a darning needle, she trying to get the root out, she has been doing this nightly for several days, she is torturing me. My brother is made to watch. She is a nurse and knows best. She was vicious.



This scene haunted my brother his entire life, and he never forgave her for our childhood. After his suicide, she started to play the pained mother, and talks with great love of him, she is a hypocrite.
My children actively avoid her, we all know she is volatile and not to be trusted. I am very very tired of her. I feel she has abused me my entire life and what she has done now is the final act of sadism against me and my children.

I am going to start a new life with my five year old son and go .
I am walking away.
I cannot write anymore, I'm tired.
I did this fight once before, endless court cases, turmoil, the cycle stops here.
There is a beautiful beach somewhere and I am going to teach my wonderful son, my heartbeat, to fly a kite.
No more drama.

Still water and active volcanoes

How do you mend ripped up lives?
I knew my Mother would be uneasy with Angela's transgenderism
I had reassurred her we had been loving and - hopefully reponsible when telling the children- I hoped she would listen...it really didn't look good, but i was truthful.
She had been simmering and making threats for a few days...
but I am sitting in my house in my house tonight...my mum mananged to ambush my ex on Saturday morning when he came for his contact visit and filled him wi with horror stories of my unnatural love.. the outcme is... my ex husband has snatched my eldest kids and is refusing to return them, as he deems my love for a transexual woman a threat to the children's safety.
And I am here - and ain't no placeabo, opiate, silvery plaster, that makes me feel that I shouldn't feel that life is a whore....I need a compass and a miracle.
I don't have another fight in me.

Mother-Love

I will keep this succinct- I knew it would happen when I told my mum that my partner was transgendered and that she presents herself as a woman in front of the children (for that matter, Asda. Macdonalds, Aldi, restaurants.... almost everyone)- that Mum would be confused and unhappy. Yet what saddens me the most in my prediction of her reaction, is her bitterness, bigotry and vitriol.

I told her yesterday about my relationship with "Adam" and that "Adam" was actually "Angela" - and went to great lengths to gently explain that my partner did not dress for sexual kicks, was NOT a transvestite, but was a woman born into the incorrect body. I could have walked away but didn't, not because I am a self sacrificing do-gooder but because I love and care for Angela and feel that she actually loves me for all my flaws.
I had explained, that I had gone to great lengths and studied a lot of material and talked to to other trans parents before telling the children. Angela and I had agreed that we would not expose our children's friends to her trans self, as we fear our children will be bullied.

I was doomed to failure really and knew it, but it had to come from me and not one of the children.

She was on the phone, and would only refer to Angela as either
He
Angelina
(or her favourite)That Transvestite

I Will list her objections
It will damage your daughter as her periods are due to start
You need a man to settle down with you
It's not normal/it's weird
I am not homophobic but do you realise this makes you a leeeeeessssssbbbiiiiaaaan
"Crying" I think you are dysfunctional, I am going to the school tomorrow to tell the staff about what your making the children go through.
I will have to tell your first husband - he won't be happy... (no Baldprick's an extremist Catholic with violent inclinations.... oh happy day!)

I tried to give her reasoned and reassuring replies but it was falling on deaf ears, I know the outcome, (I live in a house she owns) I will be threatened with eviction, she will more than likely try to harrass me if Angela is here for a visit (I will not hesitiate to call the police) she will try to convince the kids that the love we have is abnormal.... this is going to be a long and arduous chapter as she is forced to accept the situation, i'm already tired from my detox and recent cold turkey off alcohol, I don't need the stress but will deal with it.

I chose a tougher road I know... but I won't be cowtowed by anyone.

Not keeping mum

It was just about the final frontier in coming clean, despite being together for 12 months, I had never told My Mum that my partner was a trans m2F individual, a transsexual, transgendered, a woman, whatever the title, it seemed safer and less emotionally risky to tell her the truth of the matter.
My mother has a history of volatile and cruel behaviour, and I dreaded her furious "bigoted" response more than being disinherited. Please bear in mind her pet name for me in front of kids is "whore". Every time I go away she quips about me earning some money on my back. I'm sure you get the picture!

So, lets set the scene, it's my daughter's birthday and being car less I needed to get a lift from my sleepy village to the nearest town to get a birthday cake for her... My mother offered to give me a lift. I was to go round to the Bungalow of Hate and she'd run me into town. As regular readers will know, I have three kids, my eldest boy of 13 has Asperger's (a mild autistic syndrome) but holds his own in mainstream school. mum gives him a lift most morning to school, especially in the winter months.

She says "Josh seems unhappy about something, but he won't tell me and i can't put my finger on it, he says he wants to live with me and you might move to Newcastle? What is it with this Adam guy that's unsettling Josh?"
I got defensive and said it was private and any problems in the house were there well before Adam came on the scene and were to do with my struggle with alcohol and depression and nothing to do with Adam's behaviour. I sang Angela's praises but in her male gender, I had a horrible sinking feeling, sitting in her comfy, axminstered living room, and every time I said Adam or he, it felt like a lie and I knew that my secrecy was forcing the kids to live a lie, there is such a direct connection between innocent secrets and nasty lies.
I felt sick and tired of the dishonesty, swallowed hard and made a huge decision! This was my moment. I was going to grasp it.

We chatted on about the children's schooling and behaviour and I interrupted her:
"OK, I'm going to come clean here"
"Oh Good well I know alot about this ADAM!" she snapped in an accusatory jab
"Oh good, well I don't need to tell you then do I" I was being drawn into defensive mood to her her arrogance "Go on then Mum tell me what you know?"
Mum looked sheepish and arrogant and started suggesting that Adam was cruel to me and the kids in a vague, second guessing kind of way.
"OK Mum can I stop you now and speak without being interrupted, you need to listen to me very closely. Adam is a name only you use" She looked puzzled.
"When I met Adam we struck up a very honest and trusting relationship, and several months in we realised that she was a transgendered person, a woman living in a man's body" Mum looked rather startled at this point!
"Did you know that my partner is in fact a person who everyone calls Angela?"
"No" she admitted.
"I had a choice Mum, when we realised she would have to make moves to become a woman, I could either walk away and leave her on her own or stay beside her and continue to love her... I chose the latter Mum, and the decision was not an easy one, as I knew the kids might have to deal with stigma, but we have tried to be honest and to protect them as much as we can"

The ensuing conversation went well, with all the expected questions
"Will she have the big op?"
"Does she live as a woman all the time?"
"What does her mother and daughter think?"
"Does she have male sexual desires?"
and rather touchingly "Does she have similar friends who she can talk to about this"

She was clearly taken aback but seemed to accept it (i am expecting colossal fall out at a future date) and she did end the conversation saying, "don't move I have every faith you'll find your self a lovely fella".
Well Rome wasn't built in a day
and apart from her maniac laughter and hollers of ""lesbian" as she tried to reverse her yellow Countryman over me when I was unloading the shopping the great admittance went well really..........


hhhhhmmmm-------- watch this space! by the end of the day I got feedback from my son that in the car she insuniuated to Joshua my son "that she felt the whole Angela scenario was very wrong and just not right".
I sense an agenda.... the drama of life is determined to go on.

i'll drink to that?

Anyone here ever done a cold turkey off drugs, alcohol (fags even)? I've done a few withdrawals in my time. Each time is harder, when you know, what you have to face is grim and the future looks bleak. banal without "special effects".The dark hours seem too silent and the blackness flickers with imagined shadows. Well, i have been drinking on and off for years, it feels so good, to be in that anaesthetised place, the forgetting place, where all you hear is music and your smiling and laughing and sometimes flirting - kissing dancing. A heady and spinning place, I love that sense of no responsibilities, freezing that hedonistic moment in an ethanol laced formaldehyde. When I am drunk, being pissed is a beautiful kaleidoscope, my safe place, better than sex, better than heroin, but not better than love. Nothing substitutes the feeling of love. How can you view reality through a kaleidoscope? There are no answers in a mirage. When you're drunk, lust, self hatred, greed, loss, vanity, need can all disguise themselves as that fragile Goliath, love, but none of those are love, but all are things that can be healed by it.

It noticeably started years ago, in my early twenties when I worked as a hostess in London, i was never a hooker but spent a good few years in my underwear persuading idiots to buy me champagne at a £100 a throw so they could dance with me, I was tall for a girl and stood out. I didn't need to fuck men to screw money out of them, the idea to them was enough. I never lied to a man and told him he would get sex of me, I was astute enough to know that most men are predators and like the chase as much as the kill. I was selling the real quick thinking me, the funny, educated sharp me.I was twenty three, beautiful I suppose, pity really, as I could have set myself up for life.I was offered vast amounts of money for sex but my middle name was never Polo (she made a mint with her hole). it paid for my BA - hostessing served it's purpose but at a cost.

I was pissed for the first two years of my degree it cost me a First Class Honours Degree,(Champagne five nights a week and sometimes upto ten pints of Lowenbrau in the daytime).

My tale is a cautionary tale, I never ever told anyone, but once in 1984 (I was 23 and very light) I came round on some wasteland off The Old Kent Road, near our squat, at dawn, the sun was hovering on the horizon and an orange street lamp flickered in the distance and momentarily confused me, the blow to my head made me think "Two sun's?". I had been attacked, was concussed,my skull had a huge lump on the back, my neck hurt and my back was black and blue, my clothes were ripped, my tights had gone,I have no idea of what had actually happened: the last 10 hours boozing was just a black hole that had vacuumed the previous nights events out of my consciousness. Maybe this is truly a blessing. I had no defense injuries. Two weeks later a man phoned my house and told me he had raped me- i did not know his name or where I had been. I had been so drunk I had given my number to a rapist. Before or after the attack? I don't know, the memories of it are tiny nasty little fragments. I have always been too ashamed to tell anyone. He told me where he had left me.He was mocking me. The stranger was accurate about what he had done to me. Some men enjoy the kill as much as the chase. I had been very naive. I moved house and buried an innocent part of me in South East London.
I went into rehab at the end of my second year and then worked day and night to try and do three years work in four months, write my dissertation and do the final years work. I missed the First Class Honours on my course work, by one point, the panel said no at the appeal, I would have to settle for the 2:1, my alcoholism was no excuse. Clever girls like me take too much for granted and I should have known better. It was a bitter pill, I remain disappointed that I did not get a First. I blame myself.

It's so normal and so acceptable to be trollied, no one really thinks anything of it. I saw being pissed as a badge of subversiveness and rebellion, the fun thing about me, the great enhancer. The reality is far darker.

I woke up one morning last week - Thursday I think, and my tongue was black,and yet again we were running late, my liver was so painful it was giving me a vacating order. "Get a new one I ain't staying here anymore" But a liver's not the easiest thing to replace is it? Alone, the night before I had drunk a litre of Chianti, and half a bottle of Cote de Rhone, that I had lost the previous night and had been too pissed to find. Well it goes off if you don't drink it. My symptoms were bad, later in the day I was in Tesco's struggling not to slur from the previous nights drinking.

I resolutely went to the Dr, and told her what I wanted her to say. I knew the truth. Reality was slapping me in the face.

"Dr, I have been using my brother's suicide as an excuse to drink for nealy three years now, I never drink around the kids, i drink late at night and have always fooled myself that i was aware if there is an emergency, but it's bullshit, if there was an accident I am normally shitfaced by midnight and the reality is there is no one around to pick me up if I fall. . I am stopping Doctor, my brother's voice is in my head saying "you're a disgrace, pack it in Tillie, I did love you and the kids need you".
"Dr, I know my depression is the sister of my alocolism and if I can stop the drinking, these blues will go away. I will need to sleep and let the dreams come back slowly". She reluctantly agrees I need sleeping pills to get me over the first week" She makes it clear if it does'lt work this time I am back in rehab (NO NO NO).

On the detox, it just gets progressivlely worse as the alcohol leaves your system, Yesterday was day four, the worst, the truly dry day, I l spent the day on the sofa in my coat wrapped in a duvet, the heat was on and I was frozen and sweating, dreaming awake and paranoid. I felt totally abandoned. Although I did not know that Angela was in her car driving to Cheshire to care for me as only she so tenderly can do.
I realised who my friends where. Angela me and the kids had Domino's pizza for tea... I knew that this was going to be the day I had to get though. I deliberatley had no money on the house after the take away and had no intention of risking mine and my children's safety. I love them I am doing this for us.

The pills didin't work, but they took the edge of the terrible anxiety. And this time I hope I have done it, the pictures of me and Angela and me and the children are good a reference on the meaning of life and how importance optimism, love and hope are...it's a cliche, but to be true to yourself it's only one day at a time. But today really is another day to have some fun, write some more of my book and let the kids know how truly sorry I really am for having been so selfish. I'm not sure how long I will stay dry but I will try for as long as I can.

Give us a smile, the show will go on!
i did this for the kids
FOR ME
To be an ever nicer person, coz I am dead soft and nice really. A bit daft an flakey but nice with it.

There are millions of men, women and young people who are alcoholic, so I will say this because others are experiencing this too. Good luck my friends. I send love into the ether for you. Send it back to me.
I want to be loved and I need to give love. We are never alone.
xxxxxxx

The bucket List

Angela is on the phone and we are talking about how to celebrate her 50th brithday next week. She feels like it's not a big deal but I really want to celebrate the fact that she is here and it is a miracle that she is here as she crashed a microlight into a traffic island years ago and came very close to dying.
Apparently we need to make alist of all the things we wish to do before we die.
I am struggling with the bucket list.....I'm too low maintenance.


A bucket List
Angela would like to dine at a Gordon Ramsey restaurant- i tut tut the expense of it!
I'd like to fly over London again on Bonfire night at 8pm and watch every municipal firework display pepper the city-scape with a million rainbowed embers... and thousands of bonfires like peepholes to the earth's magma.
A Chanel Makeover and £400 for indulgent unctions.
Eat Sushi in Tokyo - in matching kimonos, of course!
Have my facelift (pronto)
Go to Berlin to the kinky dressing up clubs... laughing loudly adorned in corsets and black feathers.
Kiss on top of the tallest building in the world - feel the dizzy love
Gallop on a horse, like you'll never stop.
Float in the dead sea
Visit Epheusus
Have a big trans wedding and be utterly gorgeous!
Be dry and happy
See the kids graduate
A quiet room undisturbed and no bill chasers knocking on the door
To share this with my Love.

Things we intend not to do
Angela says not have a Purple rinse
Have anymore teeth extracted
Have a breast reduction (there small enough)
Jump out of an aeroplane
Be dishonest, that hurts too much.
Get dysentry when in Turkey and cancel trip to Epheusus