Inspiration

Some days it is very hard to write down my oddball thoughts that jump backwards & forwards through days , weeks , months & years.
Then there are days that someone inspires me , someone tells me they "enjoy" what i'm doing & all of a sudden i think : OK it's a hoax ... But to think anyone can find my thoughts & stories interesting really amazes me.
I've had an odd summer fighting back from some underwater world where i was surrounded by pain to discover old friends from my past & new friends for my future.
This summer has taught me i'm not alone , the pain is still there, but it has become like background muisc, neither good nor bad, just barely present at all times.
I will continue this blog as autumn nears & thank all who have encouraged & inspired me :)

The good life

Life was easy, easier than it had ever been before , probably easier than it ever will be again...
I continued to work , although i no longer stayed away from home for more than a night or two at a time, i insisted that i keep working because i'd always been so completely independent.
I woke up one night as thunder broke the silence of the night, then the rain came down hard and fast and harder still.
At first a faint dripping noise alarmed me , as it got louder i got out of bed to check ... my roof was leaking , worse than leaking it was practically raining inside my treasured little appartment!!
It took 2 days to dry out my home and i prayed it wouldn't rain again until i could find someone to fix my holey roof..
A few days later i packed my warmest clothes and traveled homeward to Scotland for a few days with my family.
On my return N collected me at the airport , i always loved getting "home" to Sicily.
Only he didn't take mehome, he drove past my appartment... i thought maybe a hotel to celebrate my return? No , he took me to an appartment building and handed me a welcome home gift - keys- I'd been away for one week and he'd bought me a new appartment and had all of my things packed , moved and unpacked into my new home.
Can life be any easier than that? The roof leaks ? no problem , take a vacation and when you get back you'll have a new house with a whole roof

The Cinderella story....

My boss had began courting me, at first it was like a joke, then he became serious... he was 20 years older than me , 20 cm shorter than me and not what you'd call good looking...
However his constant attention began to attract me , slowly but surely i fell for him...
He had a wife and 3 grown up sons, his marriage was over and had been in a long relationship with another woman. This relationship had also failed ( or so he told me ) even if they still jointly owned a business .
Looking back i should be able to say i should have known better...
I didn't know any better, allowed his million attentions to enchant me, i was dazzled by expensive gifts and the best tables in the very best restaurants. My divorce was just about to be finalised and his lawyer assisted me when my almost ex husband decided to ask me for alimony!
Of course everyone thought i was the typical young girl with old guy for the money, i probably would have thought the same if i was outside looking in, but i was inside , right in the middle of my fairytale romance which had finally come to me....
His various businesses were all successful, he employed about 200 people in a relatively small Sicilian town , his position called for respect and as his companion i was also respected ( at least in public, i can immagine behind my back ).
His oldest son , is exactly 1 month older than me, he detested me right from the start, the other 2 boys accepted me , the youngest in particular was very affectionate towards me.
Life was about as easy as it gets, we took trips around Europe and talked of dream destinations , cruise ships and other things that would never be...

where to go next?

Probably the most sensible thing to do would have been to return to Scotland. For most it would have been the only solution to come to mind.
I did not even consider returning , i was/am convinced i would not have been welcomed.
A few days before my flight to Sicily , my mother said she needed to talk to me alone, she told me how much she loved Giuseppe, how if things didn't work out she was sure it would be my fault... She said "you've made your choice, don't think you can just get tired of him and come running back home"- I had made my own bed and i was going to have to lie in it ...
My mother's speech upset me at the time and has kept hurting me every day since.
She had lost a son only 2 months earlier and now she was telling her daughter she would not allow her to come home if she should ever need / want to.
I was not going to beg her to change her mind , i would make my life here on my own, i decided to survive Sicily and Sicilians...
I threw myself into my work, became a sales rep ...
I travelled all over the south of Italy to cities like Naples, Caserta, Cosenza and Palermo and to tiny remote villages i'd never even heard of before...
Often i would drive to Cosenza or some such place on a sunday night to be there on time for monday morning appointments and spent the week in the area .. I was something of an attraction in the more remote places... Any woman travelling alone to a place like Piscopio or Serra San Bruno was a novelty, me being taller than most and obviously a foreigner , well i got used to getting looked at like i was a 2 headed monster.
Of course it's still commonly believed here that a foreign woman is easy - a foreign divorced woman, well he's doing her a favour....
I learned to detest the hotels where i spent my weeks as most of the other clients were sales reps just like me, but all were men!
At lunch i would eat a panino in the car and for dinner preferred room service , at least i could eat my meal without being stared at, it was easier to be alone than to accept my many male colleagues invitations to eat together in the hotel restaurant or an after dinner drink.... To accept either would have been likea asking them back to my room afterwards for sex. The married ones were the worst of all , shamefacedly they would try every trick in the book while their devoted wives no doubt stayed home cooking, cleaning and single handedly brought up the kids...
It was neither the hardest nor the easiest time of my life. In time it became normality , i would come home to my tiny appartment at weekends , glad to have my own place, even if it was just a bedroom with bathroom and a little corner for cooking, i could almost make coffee while still in bed in the mornings....
I had settled into a lonely but serene style of life.

Divorce

Divorce was the only possible solution, that doesn't mean it was easy.
I found myself a tiny appartment and told Giuseppe i was leaving him.
For someone who obviously did not love me and did not even care about me his reaction was frightening...
You will not leave this house! He screamed , raged and swore. No this was not a case of - you don't realise until yoy lose- His anger was because his parents could not would not accept the scandal of divorce...
He wanted us to go on living together , pretending to his family that we were happily married while each of us living our own life, no questions asked , just be home every night under the same roof and attend Sunday lunch together with "la famiglia".
I was outraged at the very thought... I was supposed to live a lie for the rest of my life. I would never accept never!
For weeks i asked him to come tell his parents with me, he told me to just leave if i had to , he'd tell them later...
I would not sneak out like a thief , i owed it to them to tell them myself i was leaving. I didn't expect understanding , i didn't expect Mamma's violent reaction either, she grabbed me by the shirt, screamed at me "Puttana hai un altro!" Of course i was the foreign girl it was all destined to be my fault, i had a lover , i couldn't give him babies , i had failed him... There was no way she would ever believe HE had a lover , he had failed ME.... I left that same night for my new appartment ,my new life as a young, single Scot in Sicily...
The day after i started to face Italian burocracy in order to obtain my divorce----

A lonely bride

I found myself completely isolated in a house full of people... The first big hurdle of course was the language, i knew absolutely no Italian , my new family knew no English ... apart from Giuseppe , my husband , but he would not help me i just had to learn and learn i did ! not only Italian , but even the local dialect..
When i'd learned enough to comunicate i was convinced it would get easier , but i soon realised that understanding each other's words did not necessarily mean we could understand each other...
Then happiness, joy , i discovered i was pregnant , i longed for the child to be born , to be my family , to make me complete.... I lost my baby about 5 months into pregnancy - Devastated is the only word that comes to mind - I'd lost my brother less than a year earlier, left my home, my family and now my precious baby was gone forever , taking all the hope and joy from my life, my belly was empty , my heart emptier.
My loneliness grew faster than any fetus in the womb, i was pregnant with sadness and despair.
Pregnancy had left me fat , but empty.
Giuseppe had difficulty finding a job ( the difficulty was he didn't want one! )
I begged him to get a job i needed desperately to leave his mother's home , but without regular income it wasn't going to happen. I found a job for myself promoting coffee in supermarkets , it felt good to get out of the house, away from his family .We rented the appartment next door to Mamma , his aunt owned the place and gave us a good deal otherwise i would never have taken a place so close.
I even managed to find a job for him, he turned it down...
He refused to work, refused to help me in the house, being Siciliano , he was the Man... He could not be seen doing housework!!
Giuseppe no longer desired me physically or any other way. I was 22 years old had been married for less than 2 and already my marriage was coming to an end. I dieted so that the flame of passion and desire could be rekindled, lost 30 kg but still he said i was just too fat and although i was underweight at this point i actually believed him and continued to lose weight.
It took me another year to realise it wasn't me who was fat, undesirable, he had fallen in love with my best and only friend .... Friend! That's a joke , how can a woman do such a thing to her friend it's like cheating on yourself! not the same as having an affair with someone, betraying an anonymous wife , she gave me advice on how to make him still love me while planning their next liasion ....
He probably prayed to God he would never find a job, Mamma consoled him and gave him pocket money, his mistress saw to all of his other needs and i worked to pay the rent and feed him and keep house. I thought a million times of running home , running anywhere.... Yet somehow 20 years later , i'm still here------

decisions....

Life changing decisions should be pondered, considered , they should not be made thinking you can run away from pain because you just can't, actually you may be running towards more pain than you bargained for...
I could not accept the death of my brother , i could not bare seeing my family suffer..
So i decided to come to Sicily, my husband promised he would take care of me, told my parents i was going to my new family. I left Scotland forever on a freezing cold September night in 1990 and arrived in Catania airport at lunch time the next day. Hot , too hot for my sensible Scottish clothing. Maybe the heat was telling me i didn't belong here and never would really. As we reached my in law's house where we were to stay for a short time ( ended up being 2 years ) my husband told me he would no longer speak to me in English so i would have to learn Italian.... Was this a new teaching method, very avant guarde and i was the only one who thinks it was an act of cruelty? Ok i learned Italian fast, faster than most , but how i hated him for doing that to me.
I waas 21 years old, greiving for my brother , my family and abbandoned by the only person i could comunicate with in my new home...