a warped view

I have always been fiercely protective of the people I love, sometimes to my own detriment, sometimes more than those people want me to be. I have never let my sex, my age, my role or my place in the world stop my for standing up for someone. This is particularly true of my mum. She is a strong, independent, smart, wonderful woman, my role model in most things. Growing up there was mostly just her and me. I say that but we had a very close relationship with my grandparents, my cousin lived with us for almost 10 years and my (half) sister from my dad's second marriage spent an inordinate amount of time with us, but in my mind and my heart, when I think of my childhood I think of the two of us together against the world. She raised me to be strong, to stand up for what is right and just, to treat all people equally, to be kind, compassionate and giving and that above all else, family comes first. She also taught me that friends can be our family as much as those we are bound to by ...

So I'm adding something else new to my blog. It will be called 'In Conversation' and will be my collection, recollection and interpretation of conversations I have or overhear. I love people watching and am fascinated by the overly loud public conversations that strangers often have. I find myself tuning out of my own conversations desperate to hear every scrap of shared personal lives, opinions and thoughts from people I've never met, and will most likely never see again. I love nothing better than a public, loud and overly emotional disagreement between lovers. I also love the nonsensical conversations I occasionally have with one of my most favourite people in the world when one of us is feeling down. We are both owners of depression and each knows, with unspoken recognition, the darkness that haunts the other. So when we have those moments of blue and black we talk about everything but the darkness and both come away feeling the light shining a little brighter than ...