Interesting Fireworks Photos – (IMO)

This morning I went to clear my camera when I realised that some of the images I took at last nights firework display, hadn’t transferred.  Among all the appalling shots,  I did quite like the following ones because of their colours and shapes.

The first shot below, a close up firework shot was taken when I had the camera set to the wrong ISO at 400, it also used a 2 second exposure time so I am not sure how it actually came out so clear.  I guess the more practice I get, the more I will understand how shots evolve…

I absolutely love this next shot, it reminds me of a flowing horse main or a tidal wave.  I especially like the rusty colour, but also decided to mess around with hues in Photoshop to produce the second image in purple.  The original shot, taken as seen below, was shot at a 149mm focal length, ISO 100 and 3 second exposure at f/11.

Image below – hue adjusted in Photoshop.

Finally I just love the neon glow of colours in this shot, especially how the smoke captures the colour too.  This image was also shot at ISO 400, so I assume there would be more detail where the white flashes are, if I had remembered to lower it before hand!  Focal length was 70mm and a 4 second exposure time.

All images taken on my Canon 350 (EOS Digital Rebel).

Paralysed by Emotions

I think I understand why women find it so hard to leave a domestic abuse situation, because if they feel anything like I do now, the pain of walking away from the man they love is even more painful than anything he has ever done to me.  This sounds crazy even as I write it, but I am simply writing how I feel right now.

I took an injunction out against him on Thursday and since then the pining for him and the sense of loss has multiplied, ten fold.  Each day isn’t getting easier, it is getting worse.  I don’t want to leave my house because he lives close by and if I go out, I look for him.  I mean, I don’t go out of my way to look for him but simple things like passing the park, going to the local shop etc, places where I might have bumped into him before, I look out for him.  Yet if I see him, I will probably break down in tears, or my resolve will weaken or my body will shake.  It is better to stay indoors.

When I go to bed at night, I look out of my window to see if he is walking by, even though he isn’t likely to be and can’t anyway because of the injunction, I still look for him, longing. Then I get into bed and sleep on the side that he would sleep on when he stayed over, because my side doesn’t feel right without his arms around me, despite the fact we rarely got chance to spend the night together.  Then I wrap the duvet around me and hug my pillow so tightly, imagining I am in his arms.  How could I have felt so safe in his arms, with all the fear he was able to instill in me?  Perhaps because when I was wrapped in his arms, I was safe from his outbursts?

I find myself often in a state of suspended animation, about to carry out a task when thoughts of him enter my mind and suddenly I am frozen to the spot, lost in my daydream. Or I will be staring at my phone, willing for it to ring, willing for him to call me or to text me.

I check my emails constantly, wondering if he will in any way try to reach out to me again.

And now I am at paralysis mode.  It took every ounce of strength within me this morning, to get myself out of bed and I’ve made it as far as the sofa.  Why?  Because I miss him so badly.  I miss his voice, I miss his face, I miss the long conversations we had, I miss everything about him, apart from the abuse and the destruction.

Last night whilst watching Hollyoaks Later, there was a scene which involved violence to a woman.  The character Mick who plays Joel’s step father, grabbed Theresa by the hair and dragged her into a fair ground ride, before punching her in the face.  Her face came off worse than mine ever did but it was when he dragged her by her hair that the flash backs started, quickly followed by tears.  A following scene between Bart and Lola, depicted a young couple mesmerised by each other, passionately kissing in a water fountain.  The flash backs of violence were fast replaced by flash backs of passion and intense feelings of the love I feel for my Ex.  The way the couple took each other in each others arms, it could have easily have been him and I in that scene.

I don’t even need to close my eyes to picture him, he is all I can see at the moment, all I can taste, all I can smell and all I want.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but emotions are paralysing me.

Emotionless

 

 

So apparently ‘he’ aka ‘The Faulty Model‘ has been told he is emotionless.  That explains why he can so easily hurt me mentally and physically without accepting responsibility or blame.  Does this mean then, that every ‘sorry’ he has given me has been just a word?  Every ‘I Love You’, meaningless?  Every lie, easy to tell.

Probably.

 

Songs To Help You Cry

In the past few days I have come to terms with the fact that crying is an essential part of healing, or at-least, taking the first step to getting over someone.  I am a major ‘bottler’ when it comes to emotions and tears.  Yes, I may well take mild release in the form of writing, but it is very rare that I actually ‘let go’ of my emotions.  This comes from a deep, in -grown fear that if I start to cry, I will not stop.  A fear that has proved to be perfectly justified over the past few days.  I allowed myself, my grief.  I allowed myself, my heartbreaking, remedial, releases of pain.  I allowed myself to feel angst.. and goodness me, have I felt angst?!  However, it actually hasn’t killed me.  My tears have not debilitated me, as i’d once assumed they would.  My pain has not stopped me from functioning, entirely.  In-fact, I have carried about my business as per normal, if not better than normal.  The thing that has helped me cry, has also given me strength….

The healing power of Music.

Musicians write their songs either through personal experience, or deliberately to touch a part of us that we didn’t know existed.  Music is a great soul cleanser.

I have for once, allowed myself to cry, and I’ve cried to the following songs….

Where possible I will link the music videos with the lyrics, because it reaches the soul faster!

My favourite on my ‘crying’ play list at present is Battle and Victory, by Nancy Elizabeth.  I was sat in a pub waiting for a train when I first heard it and one line first jumped out at me, “This thing feels so frightful”.  I immediately tagged the song using Shazam.  Since playing it back over and over again, I understand the lyrics deeper every time.  It’s a very sad and gut wrenching song.

The following song, Breathe – Delilah, has helped me through many an episode of domestic abuse.  ”I am strong, when I am quiet”.

The next song denotes not only my pain, but my battle with alcohol addiction and how it related to my relationship.  ”Without you to hold, I’ll be freezing”.

This amazing song is my all time heart-breaker.  The song is beautiful, the words are amazing, the clip from a move “grace of my heart” that I have yet to watch, but want to, is so well played.  ”God give me strength!”.  Please listen to every word of this song if you need to release emotion from the pain of an abusive relationship.

This final song in this series of pain, just about says it all… “Say you want me here, but why you have to be mean to me?”.  A beautifully sung, song, by Delilah.

Please, let the tears flow.  Do not be ashamed to cry and do not be afraid to feel.  I cried, I am still here and now I am moving onto the next playlist… coming soon

Take Care, Be Strong, Be Brave.

Love Little Emz xxx

In My Dreams

 

The hardest part of leaving you behind, is knowing that I will still see you in my dreams.  If I could erase you from my memory, life would be so much easier to deal with.  However, I can also embrace my dreams of you, whilst I sleep to revisit the times when we were happy, our electrifying love for each other as static and fizzing as it always was.  In my dreams I can remember everything good and feel the happiness we at times, shared.  In my dreams, there is no violence, there is no pain, there is no sadness.  We are as one.  The hardest part of leaving you behind, is waking from seeing you in my dreams.

 

Brave The Fear

 

Moving on from domestic abuse is very scary indeed.  We question whether or not we can live without our abuser, especially since they have been in control of so much of us for so long.  We miss them even though we know there is no other way, that they will never change.  The thing I fear most is the heartbreak that I feel.  Cutting myself off completely is proving incredibly difficult.  It took me all my strength today, to finally change my phone number, until which point I had feared doing so because I knew that whilst he was still contacting me, he was still thinking about me; maybe still loving me.  By changing my number I will not know whether or not I am on his mind, at least not as much.  However, it is a necessary requirement.  The lesser of two evils, as the fear of being at his hands once more, is far worse.  The fear of any further damage to my emotions or my property, far outweighs the fear of loneliness in the grand scheme of things.  I took a brave step today, a small step but a brave one.  Whatever your fear, embrace your courage.  It isn’t impossible, you can do it.

Little Emz x

Lost

 

I actually don’t know what to do with these feelings.  I am not drinking, so I can’t mask them.  The hurt is unreal.  The tears wont stop.  Please make it stop, please make this pain go away.  I miss you so badly but I hate your f**king guts.  But I don’t.  I love you.  Why do I love you?  You don’t deserve my love, you don’t deserve my tears.  You don’t deserve me.  So why do I feel like this?  Why do you have such a hold over me?  Everyone that I know, that knows you, hates you.  My family hate you, my friends hate you, my kids hate you.  Why do I love you?  How? Why? So, so confused.

 

To Your Better Side

 

If you had a better side, I would appeal to it.  I’d ask it to open up and admit to all the pain you’ve caused.  It would accept responsibility for your actions and offer to pay me back for the damage you caused and the money you stole.  It would tell me that you love me like you’ve loved no other.  It would understand why we can no longer be together and leave me well alone, yet still do everything possible to change you for the better, for ever.

If you had a better side, none of this would ever have happened.

But it did, and you don’t.

 

Reality Isn’t Such A Bad Place

I have spent over half my life trying to escape from reality, by whatever means.  Drugs, Alcohol, Sex, Extreme activities… whatever I could do to escape the pain of normal life and also my feelings, I would do. After pulling through the cataclysm of my life last year I thought that nothing else bad could possibly happen to me, in my eyes I’d been through pretty much all one person could take.  I had gained a little strength and a little hope, only to then be on the receiving end of a seriously violent relationship.  The incidents that happened were so severe that I  wondered how I was ever going to cope or get over it.  This time, however, albeit after about a month of trying to hide and escape, I decided that rather than try to escape my reality, I was going to try to face it.  I started taking small, tiny, steps to reduce my alcohol intake and avoided going down the slippery path of the white powder.  I began putting little things in place to prepare myself for a major turn in my life.

Those little steps turned into giant strides about a week ago, in which I made the decision to stop smoking, eat healthy and dramatically reduce my alcohol intake. I’ve recorded this on another blog www.sobrietydiary.com.

Over the past week, I have actually found it easier to cope when hit with flash backs and pain, I have been stronger and more understanding of myself and have overcome the moments faster.  On top of this, my house is spotless, the laundry is up to date, I am well organised, I haven’t shouted at the kids in about a week, I’ve been more productive, and more importantly I’ve started to enjoy the world around me.

Trying to escape from reality doesn’t make it go away, the issues will always be there when you come back down to earth and they are normally ten times worse.  Alcohol and drugs take the edge off the pain but we all know that painkillers don’t heal wounds, they make you more likely to sustain further injury for trying to function when something is broken.

I never thought I would hear myself say this, but pain isn’t such a scary thing, neither are negative emotions.  With a little bit of work and some self belief, both can be overcome and happiness restored.

Reality isn’t such a bad place after all.  I think I might stay here now.

xx

Related articles

• Eight Things I Learned from Pain. (elephantjournal.com)
• Ten Ways Denial Numbs the Pain of Shame (readingremy.com)
• Detox Your Mind (profarms.wordpress.com)
• No escaping me now. (thesoberpartygirl.com)

Don’t Waste Your Time on Anger and Revenge

After my flash backs yesterday caused by a very small thing that set off an almighty trigger, I have been left feeling very raw.  After my session, I spent pretty much the entire day with angry thoughts going through my head, reeling at the images of what he had done to me and how generous, kind-hearted and, let’s face it, damn stupid, I had been to even try to forgive him and move on in a relationship with him. Then I started thinking about how he is living his life, swanning around as if nothing has happened.  In his head, I am an utter bitch for leaving him.  He is the one who has received an injustice because he I am no longer with him.  He is the one apparently entitled to bad mouth me whenever he see’s me in public, because I gave up on him.

I then thought about the raw facts, he is a violent rapist and he is walking around as if nothing has happened.  I want to tell his land lady, that the man she apparently has a crush on… Oh Wait! hang on a minute, of course lets back track now.. does she really have a crush on him or did he tell me that, just to make me want him more?  -snap back to the present - It’s irrelevant.  I want her to know she is housing and employing a rapist.  Next time I am in public and he bad mouth’s me, I want to shout back at him, in front of everyone, like he does to me, that its him who is bad, he who is a rapist and an abuser.  I even had thoughts of getting a can of spray paint and painting it all over the house he lives in.  Then as my anger grew, so did the darkness of my thoughts.  Next time he shouts at me in public, I am going to smash a glass in his face or pick up a rock and hit him over the head.

STOP RIGHT THERE!

Just a few hours later and where am I?  Lost in a trail of dark and bleak thoughts, my anger growing fiercer, the volcano in my stomach about ready to erupt.  The violence of my thoughts making me no better a person than he is!  And all for what? Are my thoughts hurting him?  Would I really ever carry out such acts?  The answer is NO!  He can’t read my thoughts, and I could never hurt another person in such a way.  That is, after-all, the reason I chose not to press charges.  He has children that he loves very dearly.  How would they cope, with all they have been through in their young lives, finding out that their Daddy, the man they look up to, is capable of such vicious and nasty behaviour?  I didn’t press charges, in order to protect them, and him I guess. He would have lost everything if I’d have done so.  So, No! I wont be telling his landlady or carrying out any of the other acts of revenge that my subconscious plotted throughout my spate of angry hours.

Today after another breakdown, this time in my assessment for counselling, caused by acknowledging the fact that the man I loved, hurt me so badly and chose to pretend it never happened in his mind, I felt angry again.  Once more I found my subconscious plotting and scheming ways to pay him back.  Once more I found my anger growing.

The only person I am hurting by having these thoughts is myself.  As I said, he can’t read my mind, he can’t feel my anger and even if he could, he would deny responsibility for it and turn it not acknowledge its meaning.  There is just no point in getting angry, even less point in revenge.  Revenge gives them a way back in, revenge gives them ammunition to make the perpetrator look like the villain.  Revenge is a dish best served cold and one that Karma will serve in its own time, without our intervention.

A short while ago, today, I heard that my ex has jacked one of his jobs in, after being pulled up on the standards of his work.  I heard about it as it was a job cleaning our local pub.  Apparently he told the well-respected landlord and landlady, to stick their job up their ****.  Of course word of this has spread like wildfire.  I have heard also, that the landlord visited my ex at home in order to resolve things.  He was greeted by the landlady of the house, who confirmed that she also notices his poor standards where his job is concerned.

I do not need to show people his true colours, he is doing that all by himself.