PROLOGUE

This is my memoir. As such, I am letting you in on the most intimate parts of me. No glib opinion piece or a well-thought-out theory, this. It's me.

I come with a warning. No child under eighteen should read any part of my story. It is raw. It is ugly. There are issues exposed here that could negatively affect young minds.

Life has equally blessed and cursed me. My journey has been at best an uphill climb, at worst, a descent into pure evil.

I thought long and hard about sharing it. I filled this thinking time with distractions and with words. The flurry of uploaded pieces prior to it has equally been an avoidance of the inevitable and a timid approach - a testing of the waters...

My sons tell me I tend to use long and at times difficult words. They suggest I go back and make my writing easier to understand. Use simpler words:

"No one's going to read this mum, it's too complicated!"

I try and explain to them that the words emerge without me thinking them. A difficult concept for two adolescent boys who read, but do not write, to understand:

"I have no control over what emerges. I know what I want to say but beyond that, the words appear of their own accord."

This is no linear story. I meander back and forth through situations and people. It's what I do in reality. I leave trail after trail of 'unfinishedness'. This is not a word to be found in any dictionary, but it best describes my journey.

... Interwoven between the horrors of childhood sexual abuse and family violence, between the addictions and the awful behaviors repeated over and over, beyond the final devastation and within the rebirth of this me, lingers a love-story with no ending.

*A HUGE thank you to NGC-224 for creating the new cover. She accepted a penguin as payment. We have lots of penguins downunder, pheww!