Chapter 2 Spiders and Cobwebs - Unpicking the Hem

“A broken angel destined to fly; broken and bleeding, but too strong to cry! Thorns and stings and those such things just make stronger our angel wings”. Terri Guillemets

The heart is forever inexperienced," said American author Thoreau. He believed our feeling nature is eternally innocent; that no matter how much we learn from life, sadness or lust or rage or joy hits us as hard the thousandth time as it did in the beginning. But is that really true? Are you as likely to plunge into the crazed infatuation with your umpteenth lover as you were with your first? Are you as susceptible now to having your world turned upside-down by the extremity of emotion as you were at age 15? 

Over the years, haven't you acquired wisdom about your reactive tendencies, and hasn't that transformed them? Some disagree with Thoreau. They say that for the person who wants to cultivate emotional intelligence, the heart sure as hell better be capable of gaining experience. 

Well, my experience is proving Thoreau correct, yet I suspect, others learn the hard lessons and do in fact cultivate an intelligent heart? Sad but true, our emotional intelligence, in my view, does coincide with so called maturity and my current term for the majority of behaviors, that sums up a in a phrase a “beige society”.  Why can’t we educate, experience happiness, lust, rage and joy whilst ripening our heart as never before? In order for me to mature with love in my heart I have fought to understand the concept of intelligent emotions. 

I have in the past three years, cultivated the emotional flood that was so hidden in the corner of my heart, in order to be joyous and feel as painful and as delighted when fifteen.

My dear friends share this simple yearning of extreme experiences and somewhere in this brilliant adventure of self discovery and acceptance, with the aim to become as we have always been. 

I am to be a loving woman with the maturity of experience, but with the ability to love openly as a fifteen year old. The passion, the wild fever of lust and sometimes during our journey of self loving, the sadness of death of lust or passion, through the very hope we place in every human contact.

My two years in Thailand has raised my own self belief through the very challenge of living in an environment that includes prostitution, some wasteful existences through excess wealth, extreme poverty and of confronting fears and questioning right and wrong. Mostly though I grew and observed the big love from many women and men who we observed in our daily interactions.

I do not believe the any one of the women saw this big love concisely, nor did we view the happenings as positive.

It is just as it is! 

Yet upon reflection the challenge in our daily lives has incurred a brilliant step forward and love for ourselves and those men and women around me. 

This contrast of faith and trust in women is an important part of any healing and regression to a time where the ability to smile onwards ad upwards is paramount to a healthy and joyous belief in ones beauty regardless of experience, age, environment and or future.

By placing my faith in not only my gods, but my many women friends, has taught me invaluable lessons that did not exist for me growing and loving in my home country. The very notion that I would trust a women to tell me I looked great, or that I am strong and can be who I want to be at any given moment was as preposterous as me becoming a prostitute in any form. The idea that I would sell myself for love or aspects that I associate with love is what challenged me during my years in Thailand. 

Yet, don't we all prostitute ourselves when in unhealthy relationships? Don't we tolerate those situations that we would not embrace if given the choice, or when we see our partners in a light that we did not know existed?  Don’t we forgive and often ignore signals that our needs are not being met, then, wonder where the passion has gone? Don’t we give up the discussions when repeat patterns of negative behavior impact on our heart? Don’t we lose sight of acceptable behavior and manners when attached by relationship with another?  Didn't you? I know I did!

With this realization the word prostitute also has a vastly different meaning in term of having lived with this in my everyday life in Thailand.  The word prostitution means to put to unworthy use.

Even when it was through my own actions and to some degree I allowed a form of prostitution of self through avoiding the challenge or the decision that a situation with a beloved was not entirely right and I traded power, my own power in order to protect what I believe at the time was a union for life. 

A life sentence in fact!  A relationship that was based on control! A form of self imprisonment! A form of death!  A form of self destruction and pretense of happiness, through a self belief that I was being judged by my status, success or failures. Without a loving heart is to me a form of prostitution of self. Living with fear, with distrust and attachment to values such as money is a slow death of self.  

I was unworthy! This was my actions that played a significant part in the years leading up to me going to Thailand. It is also relevant, as my friends and I struggle to come to terms with our past and how we can possibly love freely again!

Thai women , even when earning money as a prostitute, often have a husband and family in their own village, or in rare cases do in fact meet and love their "farang", but prostitution is a business, it is not their heart they are selling it is their body and in their view just their body.

They too have learned that in order to remain in love, they must retain the heart of youth.

The land of smiles is the land of women! 

Men, our men, who flock to Thailand in search of happiness, are seen to be sadly the pawns in the lives of women. Now, having said this, I questioned my friends, what is different in our own countries? 

I generally and genuinely feel empathy for our men!  This is not something I have coined recently. I have said this for the best part of my adult life. I feel women have neglected man’s needs in the quest of women’s freedom, the so called equality and ability to choose for themselves. But, what is equality? I do believe women and men have, as a result of this period of so called equality, destroyed a balance that was once a given right and knowing of our roles and responsibilities in society. 

Men have been dealt with the task of sharing their rightful role as hunter and gatherer with women. Women, have since, mostly lost the art of nurture and loving ones family through the desire to be equal. What is equality when we sell our soul and lose our men to wasteful ambition and loveless encounters with women who have lost the ability to balance the home with humility and safety? Loss of balance! Loss of respect? Loss of power of individual?

Is equality emotional or intellect? I want to believe it is intellect and that I can be free of chains through balance and intellectual achievement of equality that loves passionately, knows the rightful role of independent women and men who are safe and sound together, yet free to travel their road home. I am not discussing tasks, I am not suggesting women cannot contribute in the work place, I am not suggesting all men desire to be the hunter. Or that all women remain the primary home maker.  

What I am indicating is that there is a loss of balance, a balance of power, a balance of sharing, and mostly a balance of love. We have become devoted to the power of money! The power of outward experience and in simple terms the seduction of capitalism at all costs. 

I deserve to be the best I can be. I deserve to provide the opportunity for others to become the best they can be. This does not happen when we break the desire to challenge and stomp on the very idea of what was the law of original attraction. It is about trust and honesty. It is ultimate freedom of choice with comfort of big and or small love to accompany and experience life and love together.  This is my quest. My story as it unfolds, as I experience, as I challenge and fight my way to my ultimate home and resting place with all of the joy and pain that follows me.

The land of smiles, my Thai sisters and brothers, have taught me some harsh lessons that I now must amend for myself to continue to become that woman I envisaged at fifteen years old. Who was she? What were her dreams? How did I see myself?  What was I to become? 

To make some sense of now, of why I at 54, of why I am fearful of commitment, of why I feel like a lost soul that does not trust, or believe in oneself or others, I must go to the past, to a time where I was hopeful, of a time where the heart recovered and love was ripe.

At fifteen, this love was one of no boundary and it took little effort to win the affections through passion and innocent manipulation.  Yet, it was always full of uncertainty and ideality full of plans for the future. We nearly achieved the impossible of young love until I began questioning the difference between our families, our values, our personal motivations. I began to see others, became engaged to another at 18, married and divorced by 30 and in between continued seeing my first love that by now was never going to amount to much more than a dream of what could have been.  Did I recognize this at the time? 

No, I was selfish and thought of my own needs, not of others, not of anyone who I may have hurt. Or about to hurt through not fulfilling the dream of idealist love that had no boundary and yet may have survive all but the ego of social demands .

Social normality became important to me as I worked to gain the approval of family, gain a self respect and meeting some career milestones that meant so much in the measures of life achievement. I also felt a responsibility to create choice for my daughter as regardless of my own desires and my own belief on how one should live, my daughter was never going to be restricted due to my own emotional and intellectual behavior. 

By 34, I had good employment, was buying my home and my daughter was clothed well and enjoyed many comforts that a good disposable income provided. I then met my match, or so I believed and what eventually was to lead to the most traumatic 17 years of my life to date.  

The relationship like many that endures 17 years together began with my aim of creating that elusive freedom within and a clear path that we would permit each other to take our own journey with trust that love would survive. Idealist! Yep, you bet! 

This relationship should not have lasted beyond the heady first years of lust; it was doomed with regular occurrences of theft, of lies, or absolute raw emotional abuse, of all available trust. Did I leave? No! 

I had become conditioned to the roundabout of behaviors, much like lust and passion in youth that we could not move onto the highway together, or apart. I was blessed with a son! This sealed my fate as I had promised myself that unless presented with physical danger I would commit to this relationship for life, I will and must repeat I did love this man! We ultimately gave our best, yet as time wore me down with his lies and abuse of money, the love was lost to the dream. 

I could lay blame for much of the deceit and lies, as I in fact enabled this behavior. I accepted the behavior! I did not like it and I could not see what this would eventually do to my sense of self, my love of life, of people, of change and mostly of small love of another man. Heading towards 42, I had little passion to offer, nothing to give. 

The years of financial abuse and constant lies had taken its toll!

The dream of a relationship that was built on friendship, of trust, of individual acceptance was gone forever. In my mind at that time I had given up! I gained weight, I did not socialize, I devoted all of my waking hours to my workplace. A recipe, for an unhealthy human being. 


Depressed and having sold yet another home in order to regain financial control, I went about business as usual, worked hard, smiled in public and generally ignored the issue of little or no excitement reaching my being since 40 years of age. I went through early menopause without warning or lead up that usually accompanies menopausal women. I was depressed, and very sad for what I knew to be the end of seventeen years of investment of self.

The year leading to my departure to Thailand, the final assault on my existence materialized. My partner had been having an affair, or rather multiple affairs in the space of three months. Reflecting on this now, I do not lay blame for this action. I am disappointed that the end came with such force and with such disregard for the life we once enjoyed together.

I am disappointed that the hurt and humility destroyed not only one person but many.  We lived in a small community and all knew of the liaison, or rather multiple liaisons. My reaction was one of outrage. Of finally feeling some emotion, albeit "pain". Emotion that had been hiding for nearly 15 years and then what followed was  a wave of behavior that I prefer to forget, of absolute self loathing and yes clinically depressed. Finally, I had fallen so deep into the well of self pity that I thought I would never recover.

Thankfully, I had and still have friends from that period who supported me, who checked on me, who ensured that I was eating something other than the odd bowl of cereal. My weight dropped overnight. I adopted drinking, as my friend and for the first time in my working life, could not face the task of my employment. Each day begging for mercy I began a long and slow recovery. I took nearly nine months leave and made some brave moves to head to Thailand. Oh I was unwell, I was riddled with fear, I was finally moving towards that phrase I used so often and the words of my youth. "I want to be free". I forged ahead. I left Australia as though I was in an out of body experience. Was this me? Leaving my son, my home, my possessions, and my dog!

Thailand and I had collided on a November evening!