I’ve been so behind on blogging lately I should probably just combine the last two weeks!
Week 8:
I think I can be forgiven for not getting to Week 8’s blog considering the trouble my country had at that time. It was emotionally and mentally exhausting to the point where I was just walking around the a daze. This culminated in one of my legendary multi-hour naps on the Friday afternoon.
My collab with Matt was still going strong and I managed to sneak in a line or two of Japanese in my lyrics for the last song on the album. It’s gonna be a melancholy disco classic. And it sounds just a little bit like this.
It seems I’ve really gotten back into the swing of writing songs regularly. I look in my songbook now and see something in there from last week rather than last year. I haven’t been able to write like that since 2005. It’s extremely freeing to have that feeling back again.
Week 9:
This has been a defining week for me from a personal point of view.
I’m a very trusting person, and patient. I trust a person until such a time that they prove themselves untrustworthy and then give them a chance to explain their reasons. Many people work the other way around, and provided there is a finite time between making a friend and deciding you can trust them, this is usually the least painful and most straightforward way. I don’t tend to take the painless path if I think there is any value to be mined from other options.
This week I got rid of a ‘friend’. Someone I’ve known for a couple of years though the Internet (namely YouTube), and although we had rarely shared conversations of any depth, we had enjoyed long periods of general goodwill towards one another. However, things took a turn for the worse this week. Having bent my ear about the content of a video from last month, he finally returned with a new message over the weekend.
I knew it wasn’t going to be good news so I used my weekend to recover my energy (#riotcomedown) and left this item of business to the Monday.
While I was mulling over the possible outcomes I found myself writing a new song to fit the situation. I’ll post the lyrics later.
For the first half of the week we went back and forth with increasingly emotive messages. Midweek and things started getting personal. Actually personal. I treat some things as personal that perhaps others wouldn’t. Anything relating to my writing or performance I consider a part of what makes me, me. As such I have to try my best to keep a cool head when discussing these things. This is made difficult when I get caught on the hop on the Internet. This topic, however, was a no-go area for anyone. I wasn’t having it.
I asked him what his real motives were. It was clear any concern or care he had feigned was in reality rather badly disguised interference, an attempt to meddle in matters he didn’t have the knowledge to inform in the first place. I asked him plainly several times what he would have me do only to be met with the defence that I shouldn’t be listening to what other people tell me to do. A bizarre contradition.
I moped around for a while, humming this new song to myself and adding words here and there.
And then it dawned on me.
This man was bullying me. Tricking me into my responses and saying hurtful things, all the while defending his position with the attitude that I ‘deserved it’, or that he was ‘doing me a favour’. This is the sort of attitude I liken to a terrible father giving his son coal for Christmas to teach him about the harshness of disappointment. This is not how I was brought up to treat others. My patience ran out in that moment.
I decided that a friendship of a few years with a person like this, however lighthearted and harmless it may have seemed in the past, was not worth the punishment I was taking. I had been patient, but enough was enough.
That evening, before he had chance to reply to my last message, I sent a new one. Just a few lines.
You are a bully, xxx. I don't need to hear from you again. Goodbye.
I felt immediately relaxed. Far more than just the weight of this single altercation had been lifted from me. The memories of similar problems all settled into sweet perspective. I was in control. I had made the right decision. I was back, baby!
The next few days saw me tweaking my YouTube channel to allow more control about what gets posted where. I deleted comments. I blocked users. I made some cute playlists.
The next morning, as predicted, I found his reply in my inbox. I deleted it permanently without so much as scanning it. I will never know that it said and that makes me one very happy lady.
