Number 2 Dreams Interpreted And Interrupted
Without Prejudice
The Camp
The challenge Harry explained was to write down three goals we would like to achieve over the next twelve months. Even if we didn't believe them. Even if we thought they were ridiculous and highly unlikely to come true. And that Camp Heaven would ring us up after three months and see were we were with them. I groaned inwardly. I wasn't in to what I thought of as hippy trippy Rastafarian dread lock wearing bullshit.
But dutifully as the obedient little girl I had been at 5, I jotted down 3 things. Harry told us not to overthink it, just get the thought from the brain to the blank page and tuck them away somewhere. Forget them, just let them bubble up into consciousness.
I wrote.
1. To write a book.
2. To have a lean, brown, healthy body.
3. To be in love with just one man, not two as I used to be or even 3 or 4.
And so I went home to my real life once again.
And nothing to me had changed. It was still gritty, shitty and muddy back yarded with no beauty just function. A dog shitty pick up of a back yard that contained not a flower, nor plant, an ugly view of the next door neighbours fallen down fence extension. And then the fence blew down.
It was October, three months later. I had ground my own nuts, prepared healthy meals, walked the block day after day and nothing had changed, not. ...one....single....thing.
I was still fat, 84kg on a five foot two frame.
I hadn't written one word.
And one of the men I thought I loved to bits was stepping out on me. After I had been honest with him about my one tiny indiscretion. It wasn't even worth mentioning. But he was banging someone else. A woman bully I despised. A foreigner of all people. Someone without class or desires on him I had wrongly thought.
I was heartbroken and had turned my head to the wall, thinking,
" Well, there goes five weeks of sleep."
The next day I had two phone calls. No rest for the wicked.
One from Camp Heaven and another from the wealthy businessman who had paid for my stay. He had been there the year earlier and it changed his life he said. He also told me there was no coffee and no TV as he had sped off in his girlfriends Merc after dropping me off. If I could have run off after him I would have.
He had fed me double espressos in his " new beaut " $2,500 coffee machine right up to my leaving.
By the first afternoon I was in caffeine withdrawal with a migraine.
But I digress, back to the phone calls.
Camp Heaven politely enquired as to where I was at with my goals. I lied.
The wealthy businessman asked the same.
I hummed I hahed, I lied.
Heartbroken, puffy eyed from lack of sleep I crossed to the kitchen window arms stretched wide and yelled,
" God if you are up there and you are listening, I GIVE UP "
" I JUST GIVE UP "
The next day, without a word of a lie, I sat at my computer and started writing. I wrote from 7am till 2pm. Next to me was a big glass of ice cold water and a bowl with cut up fruit. It was heading into Summer and the peaches, plums, cherries and nectarines were in the green grocers. Strawberries with their flower like scent and blueberries and raspberries, bananas and delicious watermelon.
At 2pm I would get up out of my chair, stretch, and prepare lunch. Dry biscuits, some protein like cheese, meat, peanut butter with cucumber, tomato, hard boiled egg. Then I would relax, garden, take washing out, anything just to keep moving. I hate organised exercise like the gym, but was a competitive swimmer as a girl and teenager, so the long forgotten discipline of the athlete came back to me.
I made three trips to the washing line instead of one. I mowed the mucky lawns with an old fashioned hand mower, the much coveted Flymo. After treading on the highest bits with sneakers and trackies on.
I wore a compression slip of the stretch variety and even wore it to bed. I somehow had to trick my brain into thinking it was two sizes smaller. It was well hot on the hot days but I persevered with it. Where the brain goes the body follows.
And ate a normal dinner with protein no bigger than a fist and lots of veggies. Covered in cheese sauce made with hot water not milk, just so I could get them down at first.
The same with ice cold water, I found eight glasses a day daunting so I sipped it through a straw. At Camp Heaven we had ice cold water with chunks of fruit in it. An alcohol free Pimms Number One Cup. Slices of lemon, slivers of strawberries and peach, cubes of fresh pineapple and freshly chopped mint with its heavenly fresh scent, crushed between fingers to sweeten the tongue and fingers.
And then one day as I wrote and wrote and wrote a wonderful amazing thing happened .......
The challenge Harry explained was to write down three goals we would like to achieve over the next twelve months. Even if we didn't believe them. Even if we thought they were ridiculous and highly unlikely to come true. And that Camp Heaven would ring us up after three months and see were we were with them. I groaned inwardly. I wasn't in to what I thought of as hippy trippy Rastafarian dread lock wearing bullshit.
But dutifully as the obedient little girl I had been at 5, I jotted down 3 things. Harry told us not to overthink it, just get the thought from the brain to the blank page and tuck them away somewhere. Forget them, just let them bubble up into consciousness.
I wrote.
1. To write a book.
2. To have a lean, brown, healthy body.
3. To be in love with just one man, not two as I used to be or even 3 or 4.
And so I went home to my real life once again.
And nothing to me had changed. It was still gritty, shitty and muddy back yarded with no beauty just function. A dog shitty pick up of a back yard that contained not a flower, nor plant, an ugly view of the next door neighbours fallen down fence extension. And then the fence blew down.
It was October, three months later. I had ground my own nuts, prepared healthy meals, walked the block day after day and nothing had changed, not. ...one....single....thing.
I was still fat, 84kg on a five foot two frame.
I hadn't written one word.
And one of the men I thought I loved to bits was stepping out on me. After I had been honest with him about my one tiny indiscretion. It wasn't even worth mentioning. But he was banging someone else. A woman bully I despised. A foreigner of all people. Someone without class or desires on him I had wrongly thought.
I was heartbroken and had turned my head to the wall, thinking,
" Well, there goes five weeks of sleep."
The next day I had two phone calls. No rest for the wicked.
One from Camp Heaven and another from the wealthy businessman who had paid for my stay. He had been there the year earlier and it changed his life he said. He also told me there was no coffee and no TV as he had sped off in his girlfriends Merc after dropping me off. If I could have run off after him I would have.
He had fed me double espressos in his " new beaut " $2,500 coffee machine right up to my leaving.
By the first afternoon I was in caffeine withdrawal with a migraine.
But I digress, back to the phone calls.
Camp Heaven politely enquired as to where I was at with my goals. I lied.
The wealthy businessman asked the same.
I hummed I hahed, I lied.
Heartbroken, puffy eyed from lack of sleep I crossed to the kitchen window arms stretched wide and yelled,
" God if you are up there and you are listening, I GIVE UP "
" I JUST GIVE UP "
The next day, without a word of a lie, I sat at my computer and started writing. I wrote from 7am till 2pm. Next to me was a big glass of ice cold water and a bowl with cut up fruit. It was heading into Summer and the peaches, plums, cherries and nectarines were in the green grocers. Strawberries with their flower like scent and blueberries and raspberries, bananas and delicious watermelon.
At 2pm I would get up out of my chair, stretch, and prepare lunch. Dry biscuits, some protein like cheese, meat, peanut butter with cucumber, tomato, hard boiled egg. Then I would relax, garden, take washing out, anything just to keep moving. I hate organised exercise like the gym, but was a competitive swimmer as a girl and teenager, so the long forgotten discipline of the athlete came back to me.
I made three trips to the washing line instead of one. I mowed the mucky lawns with an old fashioned hand mower, the much coveted Flymo. After treading on the highest bits with sneakers and trackies on.
I wore a compression slip of the stretch variety and even wore it to bed. I somehow had to trick my brain into thinking it was two sizes smaller. It was well hot on the hot days but I persevered with it. Where the brain goes the body follows.
And ate a normal dinner with protein no bigger than a fist and lots of veggies. Covered in cheese sauce made with hot water not milk, just so I could get them down at first.
The same with ice cold water, I found eight glasses a day daunting so I sipped it through a straw. At Camp Heaven we had ice cold water with chunks of fruit in it. An alcohol free Pimms Number One Cup. Slices of lemon, slivers of strawberries and peach, cubes of fresh pineapple and freshly chopped mint with its heavenly fresh scent, crushed between fingers to sweeten the tongue and fingers.
And then one day as I wrote and wrote and wrote a wonderful amazing thing happened .......
