I’m pretty sure that I’ve spent more money on my hair over the course of my 30 years than I have on all the make-up I’ve ever bought.  In fact, the investment in my hair would probably equate to somewhere between four times the amount I’ve spent on skincare and maybe a quarter of what I’ve spent on clothes… but probably roughly equal to what I’ve spent on shoes in my life.  Isn’t the currency of women a fabulous thing?

So, my hair.  Where do I start?  I considered making this a photographic post, so you could all laugh as I took you on a trip along the Hair Horror Highway that was my childhood and early teens.  But with divorced parents and a distinct lack of organisation skills when it comes to photo storage, that would’ve required a few trips around Australia to gather the “evidence” and I probably would’ve chickened out when my vanity came face to face with harsh reality.

So instead, you will have to use your imagination, which for some of you, will make this even more enjoyable.

The possibility of me having gorgeous hair in childhood was sabotaged by two things:

1)  I grew up in the 80’s
2)  My mum often had her sister (my aunt) cut my hair… the same sister that used to cut my mother’s hair using a pair of scissors and a bowl when they were both young girls.

For several years I endured a ‘page boy’ cut, which was just a euphemism for bowl cut, which later turned into this bizarre wind-tunnel-inspired look that was probably meant to be based on Farrah’s famous hair, but simply managed to age a ten year old by 20 years.

But, although I am making this sound like my mother tortured me from birth, she was actually kind enough to introduce me to the wonders of changing one’s hair colour.  At age eleven, I got my first blonde “streaks” and since then, my hair has never spent a day being it’s natural colour.  In fact, if you asked me what my natural colour is, I couldn’t tell you.  My hair has been:

- mousey brown with blonde streaks
- brown and caramel foiled to within an inch of it’s life
- chestnut brown
- mahogony red / auburn
- dark brown with red rinse
- black with purple ‘tufts’
- black with blue ‘tufts’
- black with red ‘tufts’ (ok you get the idea)
- platinum blonde
- yellow, whilest on the way to platinum blonde
- black
- darkest brown

It’s been darkest brown for some time now, so I may have grown out of my compulsion to change my hair as often as I change my socks, but I think this is more out of laziness than maturity.

My hair has also been chemically enhanced every which way – perms, chemically straightened, treatments, proteins, exotically made (and priced) conditioners, ionic equipment, you name it, I’ve tried it.  Once I even went on a hair-detox and didn’t wash it for a whole year.  Seriously.

The cupboard under the bathroom sink is full of hair gels, creams, glosses, mooses, sprays, heat treatments, bobbypins, hair elastics, clasps, hairdryers, hair straighteners, hair curlers, brushes, combs and swizzel-sticks. It’s a wonder I have any hair left on my head!

In summary, the many sides to my hair = the many sides to Justine.

The practice of gratitude is very important in Buddhism. But so often, we forget about feeling grateful. When things go our way and we receive what we desire, we congratulate ourselves and all too easily slip into arrogance. We forget about all those who have helped us get where we are, allowing us to enjoy what we have. When we do not receive what we desire, we blame others! We forget that what we receive in life is due to our own causes and conditions, our own merits or lack of merits. But arrogance and blaming others are both afflictions and, thus, are obstacles to our progress on the path to awakening.

If instead, we are grateful for all the help we have received from others, in our happiness, we will in turn want to share what we have with others.

G is for Gratitude

At the beginning of this year I kicked off my 101 List challenge with a gratitude letter to my mother, my most recent Dictionary of Me installment was an ode to my friends in the spirit of gratitude, and another part of my 101 project was completing a list of 101 things that make me happy in order to constantly remind myself for that which I am thankful.

I have a saying posted up on my noticeboard that reminds me to Live With An Attitude Of Gratitude. I find that it helps me to stay grounded when things get tough and remind me that no matter how bad any situation might seem right then and there, there is always something to be grateful for, even if you can’t see it until much later.

I find that this philosophy helps me to always continue to grow and learn. Some of the best and most insightful things I have learned about myself and others have happened in times of adversity, and for that I am truly grateful.

I can’t proclaim to be 100% rational all of the time, in fact just last night I had a completely irrational episode. But trying to live with an attitude of gratitude does help me to get over my occasional irrational episodes faster than I think I otherwise would.

What do you do to stay positive when things get rough? What are you most grateful for in your life?

F is for Friends

A lot of people I know have friends they’ve known for most of their lives. They grew up next door to one another, or met in primary school and have been friends ever since. I’m not one of those people. I don’t exactly know why… possibly because I went from Sydney (aged 0 to roughly 4) to Brisbane (aged 4 to 7) where I started school and then back to Sydney again where I was made to repeat a year due to the differences in the NSW and QLD schooling systems.

Then when I left primary school I didn’t go to the local highschool like everyone else, and a few months into my first year of highschool my parents split and I was a bit of a loner for the first year or so.

In my teens, I don’t think I really knew who I was or what I stood for and therefore made some really poor choices in friendships. In fact it wasn’t until my early twenties that I really started to make some friends that I still hold dear to this day.

So let this be an ode to my friends: “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”

To Andrew, my oldest and dearest soul mate. He understands me like no other and knows more about me than the rest of my friends put together. A writer, a poet and a gentleman. A tough exterior for a marshmallow centre. You will be my best friend for life. I’m sorry I am so crap at calling you.

To Elizabeth, the most surprising friendship I’ve ever made, and one for which I am eternally grateful. We are kindred spirits brought together through a mutual love-slash-disdain for reality television and held together through mutual respect and admiration. She is my rock.

To Daniel, who makes my life sparkle. If I could bottle you and take 5ml a day, I’d have a bounce in my step no matter what I was about to face. A role-model and uber friend to my son, a fantastic listener and crazy drinker. I am so grateful for the day you said “I will make that girl my friend!”

To Melanie, who is a sultry soul sista and fellow lioness. I could go a year without speaking with you and still feel your friendship every day. You finish my sentences before I can, hear my thoughts before I open my mouth. You were the first Melbourne friend I made and will be a permanent part of my heart, always.

To Jo, who is the most patient, kind, non-judgmental and supportive friend I have. You deserve all the happiness that is yours right now and I only wish I was closer so I could enjoy it more with you! As with Andrew, I am sorry I am so crap at calling you! You are a truly special part of my life.

To Aaron, my partner in tv-addiction, who makes me laugh when I just want to cry, who offers to be my nurse when I am sick, who spends all his time listening to me whine and politely says he doesn’t want to ‘burden’ me with his problems when he’s sad. If you ever do move to LA, I will probably end up following you. (ie. There is no point running, there is no escape!)

To Jodi, who listens attentively without prejudice in times of good and bad. Her sage advice has seen me through many lows with my partner, I don’t know what I’d do without her.

To Karen, who tells me how it is, like it is, when it is. You show me the mirror, even when the reflection is hideous and that is why I love you. You’re patient, nurturing and kind. You’re forgiving, loyal and incredibly funny. I hope we can sit on a porch when we’re 85 and still bitch about whatever is wrong with the world.

To Tasha, who I miss dearly and who probably thinks I don’t love her since she moved to London. I still have photos of you in my house and miss your support and advice and love more than you probably realise. I really am crap with the phone!

E is for Expectations

If I’ve learned one thing in my 30 years on this planet, it’s that very rarely do things play out as you expect them to. And coupled with that, I’ve learned that if I can diminish or limit or control my expectations of matters in which I have little to no control, then it’s a lot easier to remain positive and upbeat with life in general.

Another way of saying this is, life will continue to throw shit at you and how you deal with it defines and shapes the person you become.

I’m not a psychiatrist by any means, nor a trained anthropologist, but this is just one of those “laws of life” that I’ve observed over the years.

My expectations of myself are very high. I don’t have a problem with this though, because I have control of the outcome. I think this trait in me is why I have achieved a lot in my career, why I continually challenge myself to do new things, to grow as a person and to work on my flaws.

I am the first to admit that one of those flaws is that I struggle to limit my expectations of others. I like to be an optimist, and I think I can confuse optimism with high expectations sometimes. I think I can usually see the best in people, or see their potential, which often means I place expectations on them which are often higher than what they expect of themselves, which is always a recipe for disappointment (for me, that is!)

In no other area is this more profound than as a partner to Adam and as a parent to my son.

The word “expectations” is used regularly in my relationship when trying to diagnose the root cause of some of our more recurring issues. Thankfully it’s not one sided unrealistic expectations, so we’ve learned a lot from each other in diminishing this impact on our relationship.

It does freak me out as a parent though, because the last thing in the world I want is to make my son feel inadequate, or that he doesn’t have my approval.  In my view, this is one of the most damaging forms of emotional abuse (harsh words, but necessary to demonstrate the weight I place on this) that a parent can deliver to a child. Promoting a spirit of “wanting to excel and achieve” in a child is very different to setting them unrealistic benchmarks that make them feel like a failure when they don’t meet them. This is by far the biggest motivation I have for learning to modify and limit my expectations of others.

D is for Dad

Growing up, I was always “daddy’s little girl”, and I thought my dad could walk on water.  I honestly thought he was the best thing since sliced bread.

Looking back now, I realise that this was probably because my mum always had to be the task-master and the disciplinarian.  In comparison, my father was away on business a lot and when he was around, he never asked me to clean my room, or punished me for punching my brother for no good reason… so he probably seemed like peaches and cream to a 5 year old!

When I was 12 years old, my parents separated and I chose to live with my father.  My brother chose to live with my mum.  Shortly after the separation, my dad lost his job.  He struggled to find more work, so when a job came up that required an hour and a half commute each way, he decided to take it anyway.

Initially he did the commute each day, but three hours of travel every day started to take it’s toll on him.  At this stage, I was 15 years of age.  Many a parent in the same situation would have looked for alternative work closer to home.  But my dad chose to rent a house closer to his work, with the view to staying every second night there.  Every second night quickly became a case of leaving me on Monday morning and not returning til Friday night.  So at 15 years old, I was basically living on my own.

Interestingly, even at this age, I still thought my dad was pretty fantastic (as most unsupervised teenagers would) and I never really questioned his decisions in these matters.

The fall out between me and my dad can pretty much be isolated to Christmas 1998.  This Christmas was particularly memorable because it was about 15 days before I was due to leave the country with a one-way ticket to London in hand and my bags packed for a travel adventure in Europe for up to two years.

Growing up, Christmas was always a magical time with the 5.30am wake up, jumping on parent’s beds to wake them up, opening of gifts, pancakes for breakfast, eating Christmas lunch together… the usual!  But this Christmas, my father had his new wife and so despite waking at 5.30am as I have done since I was a girl, I lay patiently in bed waiting for them to get up (as fun as it might have been to jump on my step-mother, I resisted the urges). 

I heard some movement in the kitchen and went downstairs to wish them a Merry Christmas and was greeted with a very lack-lustre reception.  They were each fixing their own breakfast, and didn’t offer me anything.  I gave them each their gifts and well thought through cards which thanked them for allowing me to live with them in the three months leading up to my departure (to save money).  They each opened their cards and gifts and without barely looking up, thanked me and turned back to their breakfast.  Seemed that sitting around the tree was not going to happen this year.

I waited patiently most of the morning, wondering when my father might offer me a Christmas card, but instead I watched on as they seemed to be getting showered and dressed to go out…

I asked where we were going, should I be getting ready too?

My father replied, “Oh we are going to B & M’s, but you’re not invited”.

Taking a sharp breath and sucking back tears that felt like they were at boiling temperature and might actually sear my eyes if I didn’t let them stream soon, I casually enquired whether he had a card or a gift for me.

“Oh we’re going to give you some money for your trip.  You don’t need a card do you?”

Amazingly, I managed to calmly walk outside to sit with my dog until they left the house.  I then promptly burst into tears and rang my mum, who lived 5 hours away and sat helpless on the other end of the phone wondering why it was taking humankind so long to invent the teleport machine.

A gorgeous friend of mine took me in with her family that day.  But my relationship with my father never really recovered from it.  There were many many more incidents that contributed to the dissolution of our relationship from that point onwards, but I won’t go into them.

Almost 10 years on, I’ve reached a level of understanding of him that allows me to just accept him for who he is and what he can offer – which isn’t much.  For too many years I held on to a lot of anger, disappointement and (weirdly) hope that he might ‘wake up’ one day and realise what a terrible and absent father he’d been.  But he is who he is and I have to just accept that he will never be any more than that or I will tear myself apart with the weight of “expectations”.

Now that I am a parent, I have also realised that parents make mistakes.  They are human.  But the lesson I have learned from my own childhood is that parents should also be able to say ’sorry’ and recognise that the impact of certain actions on their child can often be more long-lasting than they realise.  A simple “I’m sorry” can go such a long way with a child.

Case in point : this poor boy will be scarred for some time…

A is for Adam
B is for Bitch
C is for Chocolate

S is for Sobbing Sook

When I was a little girl, my mum used to call me “Hard As Nails”. She called me this because it was immensely difficult to move me. Not physically of course (I was always a thin girl!), but emotionally. I never cried in Lassie. I watched ET six times and never cried. Christmas, my mum would blubber for no apparent reason, and I would watch on bemused with no idea where my mother might have left her mind.

But, then I had a child. I have absolutely no idea how pregnancy hormones rewire your brain synapses, but they do. They must. Because why would Miss Hard As Nails suddenly become Miss Cry At The Drop Of A Hat?

While I was pregnant, I expected a lot of unexplained emotions. So I could rationalise the spontaneous crying every time the Kleenex ad with the duckling came on the TV. And for a while there, after my son was born, I thought it was completely normal to cry at the Huggies advertising much like this “Hugs” ad.

But I fear, it is getting out of control. I sob every single time I watch Jerry McGuire. I go to water during the Workcover and TAC advertising on TV (see below).

TAC’s Pictures of You:

Workcover’s Homecoming:

And most recently, only 20 minutes in to the movie, The Bucket List – tears were streaming down my face.

By the end of that film, not that you would know it from the trailer, I was sobbing so much that I was suppressing the little sharp intakes of breath that are a dead giveaway in a quiet cinema that you have lost complete control of your emotions.

Am I the only one that suffers from this affliction? Am I the only sad-sack, sooky-lala, silly-sobbing sociopath?

I encourage comments, because I find it hard to open up at the best of times, but it’s even more difficult when I don’t even know that anyone is listening. I encourage you to share back, particularly when you can identify with what I am writing. It’s nice to hear that you’re not alone!

_________________

C is for Chocolate

Chocolate is my vice, my Achilles Heel, my one true love. I have an incredible sweet tooth, so much so that I will generally select a restaurant purely on the strength of its dessert menu. If you want a list of the Top 10 best desserts in Melbourne, I am your woman.

I blame my sweet tooth on my wonderful mother. Although ‘blame’ is probably the wrong word, because I actually thank her for it! In 1977, it was customary to start your baby on solids at the tender age of four months old (which I personally am vehemently opposed to in 2008) and at that time, baby Justine was not terribly interested in stewed pear, or mashed sweet potato. But she was a huge fan of Strawberry Instant Pudding:

My mother was a little alarmed that this was all that her precious daughter would ingest (besides glorious mother’s milk, of course) and spoke to her GP about it. He told her that if that’s all I would eat, that’s what she should feed me. So that, was that.

And so it goes that the love of all things sweet resides in every fibre of my being.

But back to Chocolate. My love of chocolate is indiscriminate. As I work in marketing, in the marketplace home to Cadbury and MARS, I am well aware of the theories and thinking behind product development, advertising and demographic targeting in this category of small goods. And in saying that, I can confirm that I debunk every chocolate marketer’s theory on who they think wants, needs, consumes and loves their products.

Snickers is supposedly only consumed by blue-collar males, between the hours of 3pm and 5pm as a tie over between meals. Whatever, I had one for morning tea yesterday.

Cadbury will tell you that their 250g blocks of chocolate are for ‘family sharing’ and are pulled out during ‘family moments’. What a crock, I hide my blocks of Cadbury from my partner and child and scoff 250g in one sitting when they leave the house to walk the dog!

Freddo Frogs are apparently for children (pffft), Boost is for young men (what the?), boxed chocolates are supposedly for gifts… I don’t think a box of chocolate would be safe long enough in my house to even get wrapped let alone actually given away.

Chocolate is about as essential to me as air. There is not a day that goes by when I don’t either take a trip to the vending machine at work, sneak a Tim Tam from my secret stash at the back of the fridge, steal chocolate from a friend or sit with a tub of double chocolate icecream in front of the TV.

I don’t need cigarettes. I don’t need drugs. I actually would happily give up alcohol if I could be promised a lifetime supply of chocolate in its place.

That’s me : Chocoholic and proud.

***

A is for Adam
B is for Bitch

I encourage comments, because I find it hard to open up at the best of times, but it’s even more difficult when I don’t even know that anyone is listening. I encourage you to share back, particularly when you can identify with what I am writing. It’s nice to hear that you’re not alone!

_________________

B is for Bitch

Sounds pretty self-deprecating, I know. But it’s true, I am a B.I.T.C.H.

I could blame my star sign (Leos are very black and white, grey doesn’t exist for us!), or I could blame the global ratio of fools to intelligent life forms, but in reality, it’s my own affliction and I am ok with owning that.

My therapist will tell you that I suffer from Low Frustration Tolerance (or LFT).  My first boss will tell you that “Justine doesn’t suffer fools lightly”.  I might be know to say “you should know better!”.  But whichever way you look at it, I have a tendency to place high expectations on those around me and vilify them if they struggle to meet said expectations.

To me, and most of the world, that makes me a bitch. 

However, it’s something I’ve been trying to work on for years.  I believe I’ve made the most progress since last year when my Cognitive Behaviour Therapist explained LFT to me.  Just by making me aware of the irrational thinking patterns that lead to LFT made me realise how much I identified with it.  In fact, it’s safe to say that the whole notion of ‘how things should be’ has been a major limiting factor in most of my relationships and experiences to date.

Here is a recipe from the “Book of Stewing.”  The meat for the recipe is, “I must be accepted and appreciated by everyone for everything I do.”  Mix it with the batter of, “You must always support me and put me above everyone and everything else.  Spoil me without expecting anything from me in return.”  Sprinkle it with a seasoning of, “All circumstances must be exactly the way I want them and if they are not, my life is terrible, you’re terrible, and this place is terrible.”  These three ingredients, when mixed, will automatically turn on the “pressure cooker.”  Stew and seethe it all day long.  Note that stewing and seething will be often accompanied by “internal fire-works” that will heat the produce to a “raging” temperature :  A kitchen where this recipe is cooked drives everyone away except the Chef.  Later, the heat gets unbearable even for the Chef.    

I have, in the past, blamed my tendency to over-analyse situations or people for the anger and annoyance I feel for them (and the ensuing bitchy reaction).  But last year I realised that analysis of a situation or a person is only unproductive when the thinking behind that analysis is based on the premise of how things “should” be, or how things “must” be.

It’s interesting that I’ve only really come to realise how damaging all this can be when I’ve been involved with a partner who is also of LFT persuasion.  It’s the reason we have such raging arguements!

In 2008, I want to rid myself of LFT.  I don’t think it’s possible for me to get to the other end of the scale to HFT – that will take a while longer.  But one of my biggest goals of the year is for my partner and I to find ways to combat our LFT together.

Maybe then, I can change this entry to B is for Benevolence.

***

A is for Adam
C is for Chocolate

I encourage comments, because I find it hard to open up at the best of times, but it’s even more difficult when I don’t even know that anyone is listening. I encourage you to share back, particularly when you can identify with what I am writing. It’s nice to hear that you’re not alone!

_________________

And so I begin with A is for Adam.

Adam is my partner. We met in January 2005 when we were working on a television program together. Our interaction throughout the production of the show was limited, in fact it wasn’t until May 2005 that we had a conversation that lasted longer than about 90 seconds. According to him, he’d taken notice of me straight away, but said I looked ‘very important’ because I was always in a rush (LOL). Then one weekend, I brought my son to the set with me and at that point he’d assumed I was married. So the flirting was limited until the night of the wrap party, when several alcoholic beverages coupled with cheesy cover band music and a dance floor meant that we got a little more up close and personal.

Our versions of the story from there will differ, mainly because I went home early that night and denied him a drunken snog. He will also claim that I was the next person to make contact, when in fact it was Adam who emailed me the very next day. A week or so of flirtatious emails and he asked me out for a drink. Although he will claim it was me who suggested the drink.

Either way, we had our first ‘date’ on May 26th, 2005. It consisted of 6 bars, 50 or so drinks, limited food and 5 hours of non-stop conversation. We swapped shoes because we discovered we had the same sized feet. We swapped stories about our lives and our loves. We swapped spit at about 1am in a dark corner of Der Raum.

The following couple of months were very casual. I’m not one to ever rush into a relationship and overly keen guys tend to scare me a bit, so the casual development of our relationship was just my speed. Of course from Adam’s point of view – a perpetual bachelor with only one serious relationship to speak of in his 33 years – he was coming to grips with the possibility of committing to a woman with a child.

It was a Saturday night in July that we turned a corner into a serious relationship. I was having two of my dearest friends over for dinner and on the Friday night, I met a few of Adam’s friends and it was hard to miss the obvious ploy to have himself invited to my dinner party the following night. I cast a casual invitation as I left for the evening that night, and proceeded to freak out in the car on the way home. That casual invitation meant three things. a) he was going to meet two of my friends, whose opinion I valued highly, b) he was coming to my house which at the time was a 30 minute drive out of the city which in turn meant he would probably need to stay the night, which in turn meant c) he was going to meet my son for the first time. EEEEK!!!

That evening went surprisingly well, and the following morning the meeting between my son and Adam also went more smoothly than I expected (although I think I was flipping out about it to the point where I forgot to speak most of the morning). And so from there it was like a switch had been moved to the ON position and our relationship blossomed.

Since that time, like any couple, we have had our highlights and our lowlights.

The highlights include, in no particular order:

• our two week trip to Vietnam together in May 2006, given to me for Christmas in 2005
• the incredible email exchange and stolen phone calls while Adam was overseas for 6 weeks at the beginning of our relationship
• our weekend away to Healesville in a cottage , just the three of us
• our ten course degustation dinner at Momo’s with two of my best friends
• our New Year’s Eve stay in Palm Beach in Sydney in 2005 with two of my friends and two of his
• our subscription to the MTC in 2006
• our Christmas’ together in 2005, 2006 and 2007
• our roadtrip up the north coast of NSW in December 07 and January 08
• the friend’s weddings we’ve been to together

The lowlights cannot be overlooked, because currently we’re giving this relationship our third shot:

• My birthday in 2006 was an unmitigated disaster
• Our trip to Daylesford in 2006, which was a birthday present, was awkward and disappointing for both of us as we struggled with being on totally separate emotional pages
• I called it quits the first time in September 2006, and we got back together a month later.
• The period we were together between November 2006 and January 2007 was some of the most testing times of my life. Again we were not on the same emotional page and the efforts made to repair were undermined with feelings of hurt, distrust, dishonesty and retribution.
• January 26, 2007 – Australia Day. In the morning I told Adam I could see the contempt he had for me in his eyes. We went to the Big Day Out, had an awesome day and then came home, tore each other’s hearts out and split up again.
• In May of 2007, we stopped talking altogether after months of deliberating whether it was worth giving another shot. We both moved on with our lives; for him this meant dating another woman, for me this meant hours and hours of psychotherapy with a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist and a string of so many incredibly unsuccessful dates that I considered writing a book.

So how did we get back to where we are now? One Sunday morning in late July 2007, I met my friend at Richmond Hill Cafe & Larder for brunch. As I waited for her to arrive, a familiar dog walked up to me and on the other end of the lead was Adam and his new girlfriend. It was an incredibly bizarre moment for me. My heart leaped into my throat and started beating so hard I thought I might find it hard to speak. How I managed to stand and extend my hand to his girlfriend, I do not know. I cannot even recall what I said. My son was ecstatic to see Adam and most of the talking was done by him as I regained my composure. My friend arrived at that point, walked into this awkward scene and created a reason for the whole thing to end. I was so relieved.

But then Adam came back, on his own, without his girlfriend. He made small talk and then said that he’d like to speak to me later that day. My friend looked at me in shock as I agreed to speak to him later that day. Somehow over the course of that very blurry day, I agreed to meet him at his place that night ‘to talk’. What about, I had no idea. As far as I could see, he’d moved on. I’d been on 25 dates and not wanted to so much as kiss any of them. There was no spark with anyone I met. But the minute Adam walked back into my life, my heart ached, my stomach flipped and my head started to spin.

I tried to push all of those feelings aside when I went to meet him that night. In my mind, I’d already closed the door on ‘us’ because I had to, and I didn’t particularly want to reopen it. But that is exactly what happened that night as we poured out our hearts to one another and realised how far we’d both come in terms of reaching a level playing ground.

The path from there to us reuniting again was also very hard on both of us as there was now a third party involved. But by the end of August, we made a decision to start to date again. To take it slow and go back to the beginning and rediscover what we first fell in love with. We drew a line in the sand and forgave each other for our history and discussed how to move forward, not how to dwell in the past. We were honest, we openly communicated and we made genuine promises.

Going in to what I have learned about myself over the last 3 years is for another post entirely, but one of the most positive things about my relationship with Adam is how it has forced me to grow. It’s made me look at myself and assess the reactions I have to those around me. It’s made me realise how closed off I had become, how strong the feelings of self-preservation have been in me. And the same goes for Adam – we still have our lowlights, but he is a different man to the one I met in 2005. I’d like to think that I too have forced him to grow and consider things about himself that he never before gave a second thought. The best bit about it is that now, this third time around, I feel like we are growing in the same direction. Sometimes at different paces, but definitely both looking straight ahead.

Adam and I have most recently decided that we will attend couples counseling. Perhaps another post in itself, we want to go to overcome some of our communication issues. We recognise that our previous problems are not for lack of love or devotion to one another, but primarily are caused by mutual communication dysfunction. With some skills and insight into how to overcome these, we know we will be laying a perfect foundation for our future together.

***

B is for Bitch 
C is for Chocolate