HAVE I BECOME THE TOXIC PARTNER

Hello there! I trust that your week has been abundant with wisdom and completely positive and all that nice stuff; I just planted some greens in the garden so I could say that mine has been great!
Anyway with all the good vibes going round I came to a kind of revelation while deep in my daydreams, that although I have been the recipient of some especially rotten antics, I may have borrowed from them a little more than I want to admit, and that I may have become a bit toxic from that.

Obviously, 'a bit' is relative.

So anyway the main reason for this conclusion is that sometimes I get really aggressive and go all out in revenge not caring a lot about much else- feelings, thoughts, responses, and anything else (of the other person) just cease to matter to me. And the it's not a change that occurs at the snap of a finger though that is what it looks like to the outside observer. It's a process that begins very much in advance and builds over time, picking random pieces here and there and growing in size like an avalanche until finally boom! It hits the unfortunate victim; nowadays mostly my spouse who I guess has developed some rather thick skin and mostly deals with it better than I expect him to.
It doesn't make it any better for either of us to be able to predict the patterns that lead up to it, but it has to be worth something. He's asked me before if I can stand to live with a person like myself, and in my mind I just see all the logic, planning, rationality, and order that would be there so I say yes every time. But maybe what he sees is everything that I have managed to get out of my self. Maybe I wear all my unlikable traits on the surface so that the inside is nice, calm, and lovely, because I value within a lot more than I value outside - it is my final stand after all, the only place I can find peace, serenity, and security when the world around me goes dark.
I can understand why he wants me to make our house into something similar; so he can have peace, love, quiet, and all those nice things going when he gets home from a bad day out there, so he can rest and rebuild the strength to go face the terrible outside world another day. So why do I not share my inside peace with him? Maybe it could be because I think he doesn't deserve it; he got himself thrown out so now he should just brace himself for the coming winter without any help or sympathy from me. Maybe there's a magic key or set of keys that he needs in order to get back in.
We tend to take for-granted the things that we don't have to work for, and feel they are less valuable than the ones we sweat for. The first time round I gave him the key free of charge, and I can't help but to wonder if I had made him work for it how different things would have been right now? Maybe we would not even be together, and maybe that would have been for the best. But we are now, and have kids that we brought into our stupid, messy lives, so any decision I/We make has to be filtered through their eyes first.

I heard that women find it easier to forgive cheating spouses than men do, but could it be that it's not easier for them to bear mistreatment, but rather it's harder for them to dissociate themselves from the consequences of their actions?
As as stupid as it sounds when you hear 'I stayed and endured it for the kids', it's a very different railway track when you become a mother; when you look into the eyes of your little angels and you cannot think of a single person or thing that you wouldn't kill (or try to) just so those eyes will never cry in pain.
What then is your own self worth at this point? Of course you want to hang around and watch them get little ones of their own and succeed infinitely but what if by looking out for your own self interest and leaving their father you will throw a spanner in the works?
I know it's just as messy to have to watch your parents fight every damn day but honestly, would you rather they just stopped trying and parted ways or they stayed and tried to fix things no matter how much it seemed to take? After all, you never asked them to have you...
So which one would I choose; stay and grow bitter from all the hurt or leave and watch my kids grow bitter because they feel short-changed? It's true they rarely appreciate the sacrifices that you make for their sake but some of these actions have consequences in real-time; and the results are visible for lifetimes in the afflicted. Sometimes.
So which would you rather; that I stay and lose my mind trying to get things under control, or leave and try out new roads, at the risk that my kids will lean the other way when it's too late to change anything about anything?
Which would I rather?
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INTUITION IN RELATIONSHIPS

 Hello mis amigos! I hope you've all been well. The rains are finally here with us and it's so great; the nostalgia that great skies bring to me is just something else....
Anyway, today I'm going to write about the rarely-discussed super power that is intuition. I have actually been asked if I practice some form of witchcraft by some guy because the second he started to dog around I always knew, regardless of how much he changed his tactics and all. I was flattered by that for some strange reason, unfortunately not enough to forgive the scoundrel though so that was that.
So is there anything to the famous 'gut-feeling'? In my experience, there is, so we should learn to tune in to ourselves and make sure we keep it and nurture it, because it can be lost if abused, or used for evil haha....
Needless to say, there are so many advantages to being intuitive in your relationship- you know the couple who's always completing each other's sentences and getting the other what they want/need without them having said it out loud?
That's healthy intuition.
To say the truth, though, there's no unhealthy intuition, but rather toxic unions where one partner feeds the other so much dirt and ill health that the intuitive partner ends up spiritually sick, and this sickness consumes them from within working its way out and eventually poisoning the entire relationship.are untested theories that have up until now not been tested enough or have not yielded worthwhile results.
Unfortunately, I only know how to get into this situation but not really how to get out because so far all that I have
So how do you get here? If you are the intuitive, then you lose touch with your partner when they hurt you so often or so bad that you essentially expel them from your psyche and lock them out, more as a defense mechanism than anything else. Whatever it is that they have done to get you there; be it cheating, gas-lighting, or constantly lying and being undependable, just know that you will get no closure by doing it back to them so that they 'know how you felt'. This will only end up hurting you more, so in the event that you feel you are beyond repair, the greatest favor you can do for yourself is to leave the relationship which may hurt initially, but over time you will heal and things will be sunny again.

If however you are, say, married, and maybe even have kids, the verdict is still out on that one, but one thing that has been great for me is to keep busy with anything and everything- cook, sew, write, make crafts, work out, go back to school etc just do anything that keeps your mind occupied. Of course you have to go back in the evening to the root cause of your problem in which case the anger rises up again like an old injury aches on a cold day but hard as it may be, just avoid any aggression though you may be craving for it. Walk away from any looming confrontation because even if you physically fight to the death, the pain will still be there, and you will have a body to bury on top of all that (bad joke I guess but honestly just get it and laugh or fume and move on, your call).
I realize this post started out about intuition but has spiraled into healing after being cheated on and I'm trying to turn it back around so hear me out, like I said the cold season is here and with it are memories I wish I could bury before they bury me.
When you are not the intuitive one, you can try and be attentive, and I believe you can grow something like 'acquired intuition', if you will, from this. Listen to your partners' words as well as their actions. Do not ever use their feelings against them and of course never ever use something they told you about themselves in confidence in a fight. You may win but you will have become a monster

in their eyes, and honestly it's always so much easier to cause harm than it is to undo it. Also never take the liberty to 'know what they mean' or 'care for their best intentions' when you know you are just soothing your aching ego and salving your sick conscience; for example flirting with someone else in their presence then sheepishly saying when confronted 'I know that turns you on a bit' or 'I like it when you're jealous, it's cute' or 'you know that you're the one I really love'.

Which brings me to something else; show your love; it's never enough to just say it a million times because it loses taste and meaning even on the occasions when it may be true. Don't say you love your partner then cheat on them with their friend or some random office worker you came across just because they are at home and won't know; or even if they know, you're sure that they love you and/or have kids with you so they won't leave anyway. Honestly what the effing eff even.
Don't say you love them if you cannot put their interests before your own, time and again, no matter how trivial they may seem to you.
Don't say you love them then manipulate and gas-light the ever-living hell out of them.
Don't say you love them if you just can't take their feelings and sentiments seriously and you feel as if they are doing and saying things to trap or manipulate you because either way; if they are, you ought to leave them but if they aren't then you're just reflecting your behavior on them and imagine they are acting as you would if in that situation so,uummm, leave yourself.....?
Or love yourself and grow the hell up.

Hear them when they tell you that they don't like it when you take pictures of attractive members of the opposite sex while you're at some social gathering TOGETHER, or when you respond in a 'neutral' way to texts from your  exes or love interests. Just stop it if you love them, and don't try to claim that you would not drive a dagger through their hearts (or hack them to death with an ax in public) because there is really no difference - both ways you kill them.
It's not even a hormonal thing because betrayal hurts all genders, ages, tribes, and religions so if it would hurt if done to you then why do it to the person you're with? Are you the Devil from Eden testing how strong their loyalty is? Because if you are then you should know it will hurt them whatever your justification for it is; just slither back down to hell.
Because it hurts that much more when you claim that you love them.
And then some more when they just happen to believe you and love you back.

What now if you didn't have the common sense to know the above and are now with Bruno Mars; locked out of heaven? I honestly don't know. Pray, maybe. Keep the lines of communication open when they want to talk -while they want to talk, because a time will come when they won't and honestly then that's done.
If you are already at this point when they are not bugging you with 'we need to discuss this and find a way forward', or 'I miss us, and wish we were the way we were before', or even 'do you think we will get through this?', then I guess just leave them; you've already lost them and their physical presence means absolutely nothing.

I hope there was some help here; don't dig yourself a hole you won't be able to climb out of, and conversely if you have been pushed into a shallow grave by your significant other, don't grow cold, ugly, and bitter, there may be someone down the road who will turn all this around, but again don't count on it, just focus on being happy and nice for your own peace of mind and personal satisfaction, no one's worth it in the end....
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ANOTHER NIGHT ALONE, BUT GLAD TO BE ALIVE

Hello my lovelies!! Have you all been nice and wholesome? I sure hope you have been, so lean back, cradle your nice warm cup of whatever and let me share my adventures of the past few days with you!!

I recently rediscovered my love for crochet, so I've been at it with a lot of vigor and it has mostly eased my very high stress levels. Times are still tough, though, and so after accompanying the him to his freelance office once last week, where he has two workmates, i tried to float the idea of making them burgers every now and then, selling them to the workmates so we can get some pocket change and stuff. Not surprisingly he was not for the idea, and shot it down as fast as possible, saying he was not for the idea of such kind of 'hustles'.
I'm sure this is because of his sense of pride, understandable I guess, and wanting to act like everything is great to outsiders while releasing his stress on me, (at this point I remember him showing me a meme talking about building your king and not being another battle he has to fight etc and had I to bite my tongue hard to not tell him he wasn't really my king, more like my personally assigned stress-er haha).

So anyway by this point I know he's not interested in my happiness at all but is just after keeping up appearances and stuff, and that day the conversation ended with him telling me to stick to trying to find a job in my field of study (because he knows I've been trying to get one for the last 6 years with no luck) again, no surprise....
I've been feeling extremely tired of late, drained of energy and as such I've been waking up mostly

between 9 and 11 and getting side eyes and all that because he wakes a bit earlier to go out and about. Today was no different, but I was in a rather better mood than other days so I made some chapati dough, and covered it up to prepare for supper. I made some strange pilau and beef stew for lunch and that was that, but after crocheting for a bit, I got bored and needed to stretch my legs.
With the babies fed, washed, and roaming around the house, I decided to burn the accumulated dried leaves and plant waste in the garden, so I can dig it up at some point and plant food, for a rainy day you know :).
I got the matches and went outside to burn the stuff, and spared half a thought at the trees growing around the piles I wanted to burn. It took three matches to light the first one, and I thought wow this will take forever to burn but whatever there's nothing I would rather be doing, so I took a barely burning twig and tossed it into the other pile.
Here's a free lesson my people: rosemary trees are flammable as f*ck! Especially when dry....
The pile caught fire and burned very big and very dramatically, thanks to the dry weather and strong wind, and my attention was diverted from the slower burning pile which was not predominantly dried pepper tree leaves and twigs.

Suddenly I hear a loud crack from somewhere on my left and when I turn I am met by a flaming branch swinging in the very strong wind. I panic immediately because this is what I had thought of then ignored and I know how fast the fire can jump from one tree to the next, then to the electricity cables above, then to the car, then to the damn house and O My Good Lord my BABIES!!!

I hear the little one crying in the house as though very far away and when I look over she's standing in the doorway with all the smoke making her cough a bit.

I yell for the nanny but she doesn't respond, meanwhile I'm running to the tap outside to open it and fetch some water in a basin to throw in the trees but the trip to and from is too slow and the water seems to flow too slowly so I scream her name, twice, and she comes running asking what's up only to see the fire in the trees.

I find the pipe we used to water the garden and toss one end to her while trying to jam the other end into the tap but it won't fit and keeps falling out when I let go of it.
The nanny meanwhile is understandably scared to go near the fire because it's big and menacing so I tell her to hold the one end on the tap and not let go no matter what, and I run off in the opposite direction to try and douse the flames with water.
The water now creates a nasty blend of smoke and fire and I can barely see where I am but clearly

hear both babies crying by now. I yell at them to get back in the house and obviously they don't listen but thankfully they stay on the veranda, where they get some of the smoke but none of the heat.

Somehow by heaven's grace the fire gets under control and I make sure to soak the damn ground in water and eliminate the chance of any spark left there, and I stay outside for about an hour until I'm sure there's no more fire. I think what would have happened if I had lit the piles then gone back to the house to relax and I shudder violently.

I'm honestly so glad to be alive and well that I don't even feel sick and angry when the bastard stays out till long past midnight, and even then the smell of smoke makes me uneasy. I think I will see things in a different light for a while now, and will definitely stay the hell away from matches. I'm kind of glad the nanny was there to see how fast it can get out of control, so she won't attempt something like that when she's home alone. 

All in all, I love my babies more than I hate this hominid, and maybe that is why I'm trying so hard to make things work, so that they grow up in a well-balanced and wholesome family, and hopefully don't turn out as bitter as me.

Until we meet next time, stay safe my friends, and do not take a single moment for granted. And if you do get into a relationship, be sure to consider all things before you have kids because they introduce new variables in the drama, and it gets much harder to be selfish and look out for you...
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YOLO

A Happy New year to all of you my foxy mamis!! And I do hope that a wonderful and successful season awaits you ahead.
A million apologies for my very long absence, but I was chasing paper on trade fairs and only now settled down a bit. I absolutely had to get something written as the pressure was building to dangerous levels.....

So I have to warn you in advance that today's piece is a bit different in taste from what I normally write, though this is in no way to say I have run out of drama - quite the contrary actually haha....

We started the year on a sad note though, with the attack in Westlands Riverside area, in which 14 unfortunate souls lost their lives. It was a senseless war waged by confused people against innocent civilians and it served to sober us to the reality of how fickle life is for each one of us. 

Maybe this inspired the feelings I'm having, or maybe it's the general flow of events in the past few months, or even just hours, but whatever the case, here's the note on which I ended my day...

I remembered my mom last year telling me of a friend of hers who had lost her husband of a long time, and who she used to argue with every minute. My mum said the two were always at each other's throats so when the husband passed on, it came as a kind of strange occurrence to find the widow devastated (she helped out with finances around the house so she was financially kinda OK, if this is important, this is to say she wasn't totally dependent on him).

My mum gave her condolences and offered a listening ear to which the lady poured out her woes, lamenting how she missed her bastard of a husband (in her own words btw). She said she would give anything to hear him yell at her just one more time, and she missed him terribly and did not know what to do because she realized now in his absence she rather loved him.

Back to today, when some images of the grisly attack were shared onlines some kinda hazy and out of focus but most clear and discernible. It made my head spin to think that the unfortunate people caught out who didn't make it out had family, friends, enemies, nemesis, maybe kids, siblings, and parents who loved them and such.

I realized that most of the things we fight over are inconsequential in the grand scheme, and just a waste of time that we already are very short on. In the end what matters the most is what we felt, and it is only logical that we feel more when we have people around us to feel it with us.
We tend to focus on the negatives because the human brain is a scumbag of an organ that loves to torture its bearers for no reason other than that it can, and by so doing we spend so little time on the positives which is sad.

I remember seeing in a book I read a long time ago that the bitter heart eats its owner, and for the longest time I did not understand what this meant, but hind vision is 20/20 and it could not be clearer now. Letting go of hurt takes supernatural strength, I know because I have been on the receiving end of the deceit of being cheated on, but we are born of stars so I believe we can achieve whatever we set our minds on.
I am not saying I will forget everything that was done to me, although it would be so much better if I could, but I will stop scratching at those scars and just let them heal as they best can. I will not go down that road of angry loathing and tired disrespect because I do not know what tomorrow holds and I do not want to live to a ripe old age alone, biter, and full of regret.

I will seize the damn day, and smile when I can, because days are coming when I won't be able to. I will work on forgiving the past not only because I love him (or loved him, depends on when you ask haha), but because I love me and I'm tired of carrying around luggage in my life which I won't even leave this world with.

So I hope you can do the same my foxxy loves, not for anyone else but for yourself because no one else will do it for you. You do also have to be the change you wish to see in the world, according to Ghandi, so stay foxxy ladies, and until next time, let loose the self love!!

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