Life Lessons!

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                  'A different life!'

I've been thinking a lot about life recently; what exactly brought me to where I am today?  Let me first say, life is nothing like I believed, it would be, as a child.  When I think back to my earliest memory in kindergarten, sat there, during a break, drinking warm quarter pints of milk and eating shortbread, without a care in the World, I could have never imagined, just exactly where life would take me.  Of course life as a child is very different to that of an adult.  As much as I hated school, it was really never that bad, compared to the big wide world outside.  I suppose from that, you can see that life for me was not the same as it was for others.  My life was very different and I am still learning lessons, even after forty five years!

Let me go back to that earliest memory for a moment, sat drinking warm milk at play school.  An innocent child, no experience of the world, a new book ready to be written. This was the beginning of my journey, a voyage of discovery into a new world, untested and untried What I make of my time on this planet is up to me.  My life lessons are very clear to see.  They begin a short time after I left Kindergarten, as I began my time at school.

  'Bullying had a profound impact on my life!'

The first thing I remember from school, is not all children are the same!  Some children bully other kids and that was the beginning of me hating school.  The bullying had a profound impact on my life; due to my trusting nature, many of those that bullied me got away with it.  The one thing I have learned, is that you should always speak to someone about what is happening to you.  If you are a child reading this, experiencing bullying, you should inform a responsible adult.

Bullying occurs in later life as well.  In fact when I look back over the course of my life, bullying featured heavily, right up until recently.  Bullying from others became a central problem, right throughout my childhood, into adulthood, up until the day I left The UK. The biggest  lesson I have learned thus far is about people.  People can be cruel and nasty.  If you could see all horrible people on the surface, then you could wise up to it, notice the signs and learn from it; sadly you don't always see the subtle signs of bullying until it is too late and that is the problem.

'Learning who to trust, is key to protecting yourself!'

This brings me on to the second life lesson; trust!  Whether or not to trust someone. Here is the thing I always fail at, trust.  As a person I have always trusted people too much, to the point of allowing them access to all areas of my life.  Of course, when you suffer from an illness that can make you more vulnerable, to those who would seek to cause harm to others; They see you as an easy target.  Protecting myself from these elements in society is one of the biggest challenges I have to face.  The jury is still out on this one; I have yet to prove I can avoid the worst people, the ones who are destructive and the manipulators, the ones who are harder to assess.  This remains a work in progress for me!

'I have never been a great judge of character.  People see me as an easy target, a meal ticket or rich pickings for those who have nothing!'

I am an appalling judge of character.  Because what you see is what you get with me, I always believe others are the same.  I take people at face value and they seem genuine enough.  In reality, ninety percent of those I think are good, are not.  That is a lesson I have to learn, to prevent many of the things that happened to me in the past, happening again. I still need to know how to read people and understand the subtle difference between truth and lies!

 'A lot of the time, I had my head in the clouds!'

Life is hard, I know that now, but it did take me an awfully long time to work that one out.  A lot of the time, I had my head in the clouds.  I have never understood money, and have always been unable to manage my own finances.  There was no one to teach me 'life lessons', as I feel there should be.  The mistakes I made at the beginning of my life, has affected me for a lifetime.  Those years at University in Southampton, were probably the worst years of my life, at least they were the most destructive.  The university lifestyle, centred around drinking, partying and enjoying oneself, coupled with surviving on a low income was a terrible combination.  I never had rich parents to pay for me to get through University; they never gave me  a penny, so consequently I struggled, a lot.  This was the beginning of my financial failure in life and sadly that continued throughout my whole life!

      'I was always afraid of responsibility!'

As a person who found finance and budgets difficult, I was also a 'something for nothing' type person.  In all honesty, I was never a person who worked terribly hard. Once again this stemmed from my time at University and still living the lifestyle I had then.  It was something I have always found difficult to change in me.  Somewhere inside, there is an eternal child that just wants to enjoy life, and never wanted to take on the responsibility of leading a normal life.  Normal life scared me.  Homosexualty played a role in my irresponsible attitude.  I was forever being told, I wasn't normal and I literally took that to the extreme.  I refused to conform to society.  They rejected me as a person , so I was rejecting it.  If you are constantly singled out for being different, then psychologically you begin to take on that persona, completely.  If I hadn't had bipolar, with the extreme highs and lows that went with it, things may well have been different.  As a person of extremes, I found logical thinking a problem, always going for the most extreme option.  The lesson here, is not mine to learn.  The Government of the day created  histeria around homosexuality that profoundly damaged me and others psychologically.  Times have changed, let's hope forever!

'A relationship is for life.  Problems occur, you both work them out, together. Do not give up at the first hurdle!'

Ah relationships;  If I have learned anything in life, it is about relationships.  After 21 years, with the same partner, there has to be a reason why we have stayed together and not split up, as so many others have done.  Whether or not a relationship survives the test of time is determined at the beginning, the first few years you spend together, if you make it that long to begin with.  These are often the hardest, as you get to know your know partner; discovering things you don't like, can seal the fate of your time together.

​In myself and Darrell's case, we had a difficult road to travel from day one, as a same sex couple in a relationship, with each of other coming from a different country.  We fought through the courts, in Parliament and also made many personal sacrifices to stay together; much more than any other couple would experience in a lifetime.  We had the support from a small, close knit group of friends, which helped, but we also had many others, who sought to try and destroy what we have together, most recently from terrible elements, within the charity we both worked for!

'The bigger the hurdles, the harder we fight!'

We both learned from an early age, at the beginning of our relationship, that no one would be there to help us.  We had no financial support; Under Government rules, when Darrell and I got together, he was not allowed to work.  Like today we had little or no money and nobody was going to give us any, so we had to fight, big time.  

We have been fighting for 21 years to stay together, and we are still battling, with Darrell having to live in Australia, due to illness and financial constraints.  We have no Mother and Father to help us out, allowing us to stay together, my family are just not like that. They think of themselves first, which is sad. We will just keep fighting, life is about battles, and ours isn't over yet!

         'I will always help others if I can!'

Despite our own problematic life, I at least, have always managed to find time to help others, often at my own expense.  The rights and wrongs of this way of thinking is irrelevant to me, because it will never change.  I have been told on numerous occasions, that I am doing too much for others; while I am giving, they are taking and often removing items and money as well as taking advantage of my good nature.  I know all these things to be true, but as a person, this is a lesson I will never learn.  I am a giver, even if I have nothing.  I have very little left of monetary value in my life, but if someone needs it more than I, then it's theirs.  One of the lessons we should all learn from  life, is doing good for others, without receiving anything in return, is good for the soul and the real reason why we are all here.  To help those less fortunate.

                                           'A personal life, should remain just that, PERSONAL!'

​I wear my heart of my sleeve, I am an open book.  Recognise these sayings, well, these words speak volumes for who I am.  As 'The Real Truth and Bare Naked Truth, Blogger', I have often been accused of speaking too honestly, at times, mainly about myself. Well, yes I agree to an extent.  I have had a troubled life, especially over recent times.  This was often compounded by my honest words, especially on social media. I accept that I went too far at times. 'The Watchers or Collectors' as I call them, collated information from my words and tried to use it against me.  Well I have another view as well.  Despite realising I was too honest at times, I also believe that if you tell the truth, others can't use anything against you in future, which to an extent they can't. A happy medium needs to be reached between truth and saying only what you need to say, for your own protection.  On top of that, maybe I should have been wiser with the friends I had in the first place!


'We will always keep learning!'
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As people we will all keep learning the lessons of life.  As quick as we learn one lesson, we are confronted by another, just as fast.  The story of life is about becoming erudite, from life's mistakes, indiscretions and catastrophies.  The more knowledge we have, concerning our own and other people's mistakes, the more we can learn and put things right.  Learning life's lesson's can be hard and painful, but we have to experience them to move forwards.

    The lessons of life are ours to change!'

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