Relationships

I am sitting on the boat sailing over to France and I have just completed watching the movie Platoon. Something I did not realise is that Oliver Stone the movie director went to Vietnam and the film is based on his experience out in the wild. It´s a great movie and I love watching it. I can´t count how many times I have watched that movie and it always fills me with a feeling of courage for some bizarre reason. The next movie on the list to watch is The Motorcycle Diaries, based on the journal of Che Quevara and again this film makes me want to get up and start a revolution, if you know what I mean.

And thank God for that feeling that I need to move forward. Its great to have left London and the UK and it is fantastic to be growing again in the right direction. I found in London my co-dependency started creeping in and I became very attached to Nina K. She made it very clear to me that we are and can only be friends, and I hate rejection. The strange thing is that I was not overly interested in Nina, up until the point that I thought I could not “have her”. What a horrible phrase “have her” is and I am going to regret using it I am sure, however it sums up my feelings.

My problem is and always has been deep routed in relationships, I have never been able to maintain any form of relationship for longer than a 6 month period, which actually means that life becomes very lonely very quickly. Nina is a fantastic example of me wanting more than I actually need and pushing the boundaries of a relationship and putting the relationship under pressure.

Its not the first time. In primary care I fell for Kelly, then there was Anna I had a relationship with Emily only because she promised to open doors for me in the music business, and it is funny how life comes back to teach me a lesson. There was Tina who has become a good friend and I am sure there will be many more before I am through. The great thing is when ever I feel pain and I am vunerable, I am growing and I am in full recovery. I am on my way, and miracles happen in recovery.

I am not mature enough to have a relationship. A good friend of mine Phony always states that I need to have a relationship with God, myself and then other people. When I get that mixture the wrong way round then things don´t seem to work out. If my motive is to have sex then I am always left feeling empty from the experience. If my motive is to gain from the relationship then I will always find the mirror image of my ego in other people.

What I found in Nina, in friends and in London is ego. My ego is a necessary part of my character, however when the ego is larger than my soul I am never going to get anywhere in life apart from ultimately an unhappy place. I need to find balance. As an addict I don´t have any feeking balance, I struggle to read the signs littered by the universe, I struggle to recognise my feelings for what they are and not for they are not.

Old and new associations are always going to generate some form of nuero chemical reaction in my brain, and I am going to feel, pain, rejection, sadness and fear. So I have two choices, Face Everything And Recover or Fuck Everything And Run. I have been running all my life and blaming everyone else for that fact that I could not look at myself in the mirror. This time round I am facing up to who I am and I am making choices, right between wrong, good between bad. So Nina does not fancy me! I felt rejected and I attempted to explain that feeling of rejection. The whole scene was about me and my disease and nothing more. Kelly, Anna, Emily and Nina, I´m sorry, however I am to unwell to even care any more. Its nothing to do with me what you think of me, this is my journey and you are only hitching a ride!

Relationships release endorphins in the brain and I become addicted to people, places and things. If something or someone changes the way I feel about myself then I have the addictive pattern. In business I struggle especially when someone in the music business shows interest in my work. An early example would be the very brief relationship I grew with Aaron from Mother City Records who looks after the up and coming Uncle Bob. Aaron showed interest in my music and I then saturated Aaron, peppering him with telephone calls and emails, looking for affirmation. This is co-dependency, the need for outside concerns to make me feel worth while. At the end of the day I am a feeking worth while person. I am cool. I am me. Perfect just the way I am meant to be and the way God has created me.

I also believe that I am in the exactly the right place in life as I am sitting on the bus driving to the Alps and I am writing my blog on my ACER laptop. This time last year I was sitting in a Rehab in South Africa trying to work out why I hated myself so much, and now I can bounce back within 24hrs and say “I am a worthwhile person and my serenity does not depend on whether you like me or not”. Saying that I am not going to deny my feelings as when I do I become more unwell than I was before.

Maureen Corsi my great friend and surrogate mother will always tell me, the only relationship I truly need is the relationship with God. Good Orderly Direction or G.O.D. Seems to be working in my life now a days. I am not as lonely as I once was and there seems to be a peace in me that I have never witnessed in my life before. The things that mattered don´t matter any more, and people who drifted away from me seem to be gently pushing their worlds back into mine. I told my friend Guillaume that what is happening to me is called a miracle, and he told me in return that miracles don´t happen.

Guillaume my friend you are wrong, where there once was hatred there now is love, and love is the highest from of communication and consciousness. Where does all his philosophical bullshit take me? Not far I am sure. However when I popped in to see Richard Engler at Autonomy Music during my stay in London, he told me that Paul Weller is quoted to having said that he needs turmoil in his relationships to inspire his writing, and that explained why he has had so many relationships.

I did not reply to Richard at this point of the conversation as I was too busy burying deep into his talent to unearth some brilliant free marketing information from him. Now that I have had some time to think, I am very pleased to announce that my inspiration is coming from my new relationship and from the wisdom in the rooms. The future is bright, the future is ours.

To think back to the sexual encounters that took place in active addiction leads me to bury my head in the sand. How can I forget? Why would I want to forget? For those who forget are deemed to repeat the past, and I can neither afford nor allow the same mistakes to happen again. It is only now that I am building up what is commonly known as self respect. I am me, I am the Walrus.

Now here is a plug for Richard´s band and his record company Autonomy.

The band at the moment that is top of the breaking pops is called Tom McKean and The Emperors, they are playing at the Luminaire next month, you can catch them on Facebook, so go out and buy the feeking single:

The Emperors consist of Andy Simms on keyboards, clarinet and horns, Iain Ross on drums, mandolin and vocals, guitarist Bobby Williams, Ed Miller on bass, singer and guitar player Tom McKean and an evolving coterie of string players and other part time Emperors.