she walked on eggshells
you don’t lie to the person that you love
~
skilled liar
she was carnal
and I truly adored her
I never knew the real woman
she walked on eggshells around me
why do I adore a false chimera, an avatar?
~
jack collier
jackcollier@talktalk.net
and she never tells the truth
Truth and Openness
there is a magic in truth, and honesty, and openness
eclipsing the truth
Everything I write on this blog, at least everything I have written recently is the brutal truth. I don’t hold anything back, to the best of my ability I tell you exactly what is in my heart. The post I wrote yesterday, Why I’m Still Alive, is a case in point. I could have dressed that story up, made myself look a little better, perhaps garnered more sympathy from you. But, why would I do that? If I am going to write anything at all about myself it has to be true, and not just part of the truth, but the entire truth. There are some caveats; I am not an Ernest Hemingway nor a Philip Roth, and the format I’m writing in is a blog, and a blog post needs to be fairly short and pithy. But over and above all that, this is me, and everything I write is coloured and edited by that simple fact.
Also, but only to a certain extent, I choose what to write about. Some of my posts I just know I have to write, and they flow onto the screen without any conscious thought, those posts arise fully formed from my deepest subconscious mind. Ergo, they have to be true, because I’m not even certain that the subconscious knows how to lie.
Why write this painful stuff at all?
Because it’s therapeutic, because I like to know what you think about me and the things I have revealed to you, because if I didn’t write this stuff it would go around and around in my mind like a rat on a wheel. It’s cathartic to write the brutal truth. If I lied, or told less than the truth, then you would know, and most likely you would respect me less. However, how easy it is for people to believe the lie.
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again. ~ Mark Twain
Most liars can’t remember all the lies they’ve told, and if they’re lying by omission what they have said and what they haven’t said. It’s easy to for me to remember the truth, but if I ever lied I’d have to keep referring back to old posts.
A liar should have a good memory. And a liar’s worst enemy is someone else with a good memory. ~ Quintilian
Some say that everybody lies all the time. And that a little white lie never hurt anyone. All I know is that all lies are toxic and destructive, especially lies of omission. Trust me, I will always tell you the absolute truth.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
thou shalt not bear false witness
Bitterness and Resentments
let today be the day I stop being haunted by the ghosts of the past
black lonely desolate
There are some thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and people that I no longer want to be part of my life ~ especially not this different life I am living today, the different and better life I have known since The Full Wolf Moon. I look in the mirror and the eyes that look back at me are far to hard and brittle, too guarded, too untrusting for the man I wish to become. Some of that is the product of my whole life, and some of it comes from what was a dysfunctional relationship, where I felt that I was giving far more than I received in return.
Truth be told, relationships are not supposed to be like that, if it’s going to work well a relationship between a man and a woman should have balance and harmony, what we are pleased to call ‘give and take’. And, truth be told my bitterness and resentments are my own, they don’t belong to anyone else, and nobody else could have created them in me. Like each and every single thing that happens to us, my negative feelings are things that I did to myself. Nothing happens to us unless we allow it, up to and including being the victim of a natural disaster. Nobody forced you to live in an earthquake zone, or where there are wildfires, and nobody forced the passengers to get on the Titanic.
Specifically my bitterness and resentments were created by some relationships I chose to enter into, and then I stayed in those relationships long past the time I should have just walked away without looking back. Some people are toxic, and while people may change, the memory of that toxicity will live on…..
I do not want any of that in my life, so how do I change it? And I have no fucking idea about how to turn that around, to lose the bitterness and resentments, to lose the memories of toxic and dysfunctional relationships, to begin to innocently trust again. I’m trying to find a way, and there’s nothing there.
All I can do is tell my conscious mind that I want a lighter and more innocent set of thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. I want to only ever remember the good things about relationships past and present, I want to regain my sense of trust, my feeling of fun, my joy in the people I know. I want to be in a place where I truly accept, understand, nurture, and cherish those I profess to care for. I want my unconscious mind to pay attention and change my own hard-wired feelings and beliefs for something far better.
Some say, once bitten twice shy. And fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. All I know is that I would rather be an innocent fool than a guy with very hard eyes.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
a new dawn
a new hope
Why I’m Still Alive
when all that’s left are the empty promises
the sun was going down on my life
Christmas had come and gone. I couldn’t remember the New Years’s at all, time had slipped from 2019 to 2020 completely unnoticed by me. It was January 7th 2020 and I had been smashed and broken to another low rock bottom. My life was a slow-motion freight train wreck at the end of the line in a place called Hell. My mind was numb and empty, my soul was tortured by demons of my own making, my body was suffering from a lack of food and too much booze. Part of me wanted to die, part of me hoped I would die, and a small part of me entertained dark thoughts of painless suicide. Walking into the cold North Sea would kill me, but that would mean I had to get out of bed, leave the garret, and walk the hundred or so yards to the beach. That was never going to happen.
But something happened. Call it sheer bloody mindedness, call it being protected by a guardian angel, call it the universal unconscious helping me, but I did something positive. It took a while.
First I got myself out of bed, went to the kitchen counter and poured a half-full bottle of vodka down the drain. Thought about coffee, but I knew I’d throw up. Drank some water, threw up.
Bathroom and alcoholic constipation hurts. Stood under the shower in my filthy clothes and stripped naked there, soaped up some. No chance of my risking a wet shave.
Got dry and left the wet towels in the middle of the garret, on the floor, discarded at random.
Combed my hair, got dressed in clean clothes, even clean socks. Looked at the clock, it was just on half-past-six, and I didn’t know if it was morning or evening, nor did I know what day it was.
Collapsed into my armchair, exhausted and shaking. Sat there for a long time staring at the wall, my mind empty, my soul in pain. I could see scuttling things out of the corner of my eye I knew weren’t real, weren’t there at all. Electric shave.
After a long long while I made myself a coffee, felt like throwing up but didn’t. I knew that somewhere out there someone or something was sending me all good wishes.
My thoughts and feelings were being led by demons down a dark road that only led to bad things, so I picked up my tablet as a distraction. Tried to play solitaire, not enough concentration. Instead I read some posts by the very special people I follow. I read a post by Rhapsody Boheme about The Wolf Moon, and the special things that could happen then ~ transformation, renewal, rebirth….. And here, The Wolf Moon was at 19:21 hrs on January 10th, 2020. I resolved to stay sober until then. Before then I would clean the garret, only demons will enter a place that looks like a pig-sty.
At around 19:15 on January 10th I darkened the garret, lit some scented candles, and put some soothing music on the record player.
19:21 on Friday January 20th, 2020 a sense of peace I had not known ever before in my tortured existence, the music playing was The Memory Of Trees by Enya; the simple vocal refrain on that instrumental track is Be Yourself. It was a profound message, and I knew exactly what it meant.
My life hasn’t been the same since. My life is different and better, and improving day by day, hour by hour, and something or someone is still guiding me. If you are suffering as I was, I know that you can have that too. Nobody with even an ounce of goodness in their soul is abandoned forever.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
infinity came for me and lifted me up
Friends Without Benefits
she spoke to him with words, he looked at her with feelings
~
can you just be friends with me?
was the question she asked him
since I get no choice I guess yes
are you really sure about that?
she asked, very sweetly smiling
twisting the knife a little more
he’s only a second-best friend
it’s a real shame he’s in love
even worse that it had to be her
but love has no common sense
it’s just the road to Hell
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
love and desire going nowhere
Honesty and Discretion
it takes strength and courage to admit the whole truth
~
You may be aware that in the last few days I have undergone something of a transformation, and it seems the man I have become has a dedication to truth, honesty, and openness. That is not necessarily a completely good thing. Already I have found that there are innumerable situations where complete honesty wouldn’t be appropriate. If someone is promulgating a web of lies about who and what they really are, it seems to me that it’s better if I ignore all that, keep quiet, and allow them to live their life of sad, dishonest, illusions, and delusions.
Hell, for all of my life I lived as versions of me that were only mostly true. That was not my fault, maternal neglect can have a negative effect on your whole life.
If someone wants to hide what they did in their past, and never mention the reprehensible things they have done to give the impression that they are someone and something that they are not and never have been, then maybe it’s better that I ignore that too. After all, if someone is mostly hiding their past, then it means they don’t want others to know about it, including me.
Some people are just beautifully wrapped and packaged boxes full of fucking shit.
In general, if someone is hiding their past it either means they are ashamed of it, or scared of your reaction if they tell you about it. Hiding or denying your past doesn’t work, because sometime, somewhere, someday, somehow you will come up against someone who knows all about you. And the chances are they will tell your new and innocent friend just exactly who and what you used to be ~ either by accident or on purpose.
There are lots of reasons people hide or deny their past, or even who they really are right now; alcoholism, criminality, unpaid debts, drug taking, promiscuity, prostitution, sexual deviance, marriage, children….. But, all of these things are matters of public record, and you can hide none of the above for very long.
I will throw out one piece of advice, don’t lie to me unless you’re absolutely certain I will never find the truth. And even in the days of my crazy alter-egos of myself, I always found the truth.
Mean and toxic people don’t bother me. Mean and toxic people who disguise themselves as nice and honest people bother me a lot. ~ Cindy Cummings Johnson
Some say that everybody lies. And that if someone is hiding their past, then they must have a damn good reason. All I know is that liars need a very good memory, and most people have very poor memories.
~
Jack Collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
every time you tell another lie you handcuff yourself just a little tighter
Who am I?
change your thoughts and beliefs, change your whole life
After The Wolf Moon I took all the negativity, shame, and inferiority my parents had given me and let it all go into the mists of the past. I took all the hurt of my life, the bullying, the failures, the lost loves, the toxic love affairs and let all that go into the mists of the past. And then I took all of those false versions of myself, all of the chimera I had created to cope with life, all of the players I used to deal with different people in different situations and let all of those vanish into the mists of the past too. And what was left was just myself ~ the person I had never been allowed to be, the man I’d never dared to be.
Unless you are an insane sociopath, then each and everyone of us has a subconscious filled with negative, poisonous, unhelpful memories, thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. We did not create these demons all on our own, we had a lot of help. Before we were seven years of age our parents, older siblings, aunts, uncles and older cousins, teachers, and every other fucking person in authority we came across planted all of these poisons in our innocent minds. Since then, every negative situation we endured, especially when it comes to love and sex, fed and strengthened those demons. And then the demons ruled our lives.
I can look back now, dispassionately, honestly, openly, and fully recognise what my demons did to my life, how they destroyed everything that could have been good and fine, and led me down a darker road. I did my best to walk the warrior’s path with honour and chivalry, but I was doomed to failure as long as the demons of my past ruled my every thought, belief, behaviours, words, and deeds.
And so I tried to escape the pain through some very impulsive and stupid things, especially I retreated into booze. If life got too hard for me to bear I would get drunk, and I don’t mean just a little bit tipsy, I mean lost weekend drunk. You know what? If you drink a lot then your body, brain, mind, heart, and soul come to expect and need alcohol in your bloodstream ~ which is why alcoholics can almost never, ever get sober. I was in severe danger of drinking myself to death, and I didn’t fucking care.
And then there was The Wolf Moon, a time of renewal, redemption and rebirth, when the very fortunate may just receive some kind of message, and the message I got from my Goddess was Be Yourself.
And that leaves me with a question, just who am I?
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
my demons are locked away
Wolf Moon Revelation
and one man in his time plays many parts
The most profound truths sometimes come in a very simple message, and the message I had at the exact time of the Full Wolf Moon last evening was; Be Yourself. And the strange thing is I know exactly what that means to me.
I have had a lot of practice at being half a hundred other people, of wearing a mask, of fitting-in, playing the role I was expected to play ~ but I can’t ever remember being myself. It’s always been too dangerous.
However, from this time on I will no longer be the Man people expect me to be, I will no longer play the role I am expected to play. This is a new road, towards a new horizon, walked by a man different to the man I was before, and the man I was before was never me.
For the past few days I have been struggling with who I used to be, and the knowledge that I both wanted and needed to be a different man living a different life. But I didn’t know what, why, when, how, nor where, nor who. I had the need, the desire, I wanted to be both different and better, but I didn’t have a direction, nor did I have a plan. For some reason I knew things were going to change soon.
Then yesterday I learned that there was going to be a Wolf Moon, and that it was going to mean things to me ~ I wrote about that.
Last evening I darkened the garret save for some appropriately scented candles, put on some atmospheric music, and sat myself down to wait, my mind open, my heart and brain in harmony. And at just about 19:21 hrs, the exact time of the full moon, I received the strongest possible message, and I knew it was right and I knew exactly what it meant.
Do you know there is a vocal refrain in the opening track from the Enya album The Memory of Trees? Do you know what that repeated refrain is? It’s Be Yourself.
I heard that and I understood.
I will not be the man in the mirror anymore. I will not be a different guy with different people in different situations. I will no longer be a people-pleaser, nor will I be a macho-man, nor devil-may-care, or the life and soul of the party, or a boyfriend, good citizen….. All of the dozens of roles we play day by day, and all of the different acts we put on, will be left behind. For playing all of those roles was making me very sick, because I believed them and they were all false. From now on I shall be myself, and only myself.
Some say they have lost their sense of identity. And that their career has taken over their lives. All I know is I will stand alone and I will be myself.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
today there is a new horizon
Wolf Moon
I was a wolf, and she was my moon.
Here in England the first full moon of 2020 occurs at 19:21 hrs on January 10th, and the January full moon is known as The Wolf Moon. There will also be a full lunar eclipse. Leaving aside the astronomy; at this time I need to be communicative, expressive, honourable, objective, and resourceful. I need to consider my options and opportunities in life. This is the end of a journey that began years ago, a time to release something that up until now I was not ready to let go of, so I also need to look deeply inward..
This full moon I will release any energy, attachments, thoughts, emotions, and relationships that no longer serve my best interests. People, places, and things that have been toxic for me will no longer be part of my life. In time I will set new intentions and develop a different life from that which has gone before.
I release all the things from my past that have caused my negative attachments. I prepare and welcome new changes, new lessons, and new adventures. I welcome new opportunities to grow physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
Some say there are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. And that only a true wolf will fall in love with the moon. All I know is that just because I’m on a different path, it doesn’t mean I’m lost.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
it’s time for me to take a hard look at relationships
(Funny how things work out. Until I read Rhapsody Boheme’s blog today I didn’t even know there was a full moon tonight. And yet, if you have been reading my blog over the past few days you will know that the spiritual significance of this Wolf Moon is exactly where I am in my life’s journey.)
Looking After #1
you can’t pour from an empty glass
Especially in recent weeks, and perhaps for years before that, I have been sick; physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Over the Holidays I was so ill it almost killed me. The proximate cause of my illness was drinking to much, and that also meant that I didn’t eat, nor did I sleep. It was so bad that a few days ago I hit rock bottom ~ where I didn’t care if I lived or died.
I have recovered from that nadir of my unhappy existence. Recovered enough that I know I don’t ever want to go there again. I want to life a different life from where I’ve ever been before, I want to live a better life ~ even though I’m not yet certain what any of that means.
However, I believe I know how I got there; I was looking to other people to create my happiness for me. Mostly I was looking for a woman to make me happy. That can never work, putting your happiness in the hands of another is a certain road to misery. It just means that you don’t live your own life at all.
When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you aren’t saying ‘no’ to yourself. ~ Paulo Coehio
I’ve been very guilty of saying ‘yes’ when I should have said ‘no’. Amazingly I know exactly why all that happened to me, maternal neglect can do that to a child, especially if he’s spent the first weeks of his life isolated in an hospital incubator.
What I need to do is to first take good care of myself. Look after my body, mind, emotions, and spirit before I do anything else. Put myself first. Look after #1.
Obviously I’m not yet certain how I’m going to do that, and I’m not going to explore the internet looking for solutions. From now on everything I do will come from within.
My first thoughts are; stay sober, eat and drink well, take the right supplements, get plenty of fresh air and exercise….. (fresh air and exercise in the North of England in winter?) But that just looks after my body. Mentally, emotionally, and spiritually all I can think of is to give myself time to heal, avoid conflicts, avoid dysfunctional emotional entanglements, stay away from toxic women…..
You can tell me if you think I’m wrong, or if you have better ideas.
Some say that loving yourself is selfish vanity. And that loving the wrong woman is the most exquisite form of self-destruction. All I know is that a wound only gets worse if it’s treated with neglect.
~
Ingredients:
1 part vodka
1 part tequila
1 part rum
1 part gin
1 part triple sec
1 1/2 parts sweet and sour mix
1 splash Coca-Cola
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
too much of this stuff will kill you
