Two Years on Twitter

It's two years ago today since I joined twitter; I can't remember exactly why I joined. I think I'd kept hearing about it on TV and at the time it wasn't long after my Mum died and I was lonely. I signed up and very quickly became hooked.

It's strange looking at my previous blog post where I was complaining about twitter. It does get on my nerves at times but I'll forever be grateful to the site because it changed my life.

If I hadn't have joined twitter I wouldn't have met my amazing boyfriend. We first chatted about six weeks after I joined twitter; we met up in real life four weeks after that and we've not really been apart ever since.

Twitter has brought many other people into my life too. Some of the first people I chatted with are still on my timeline, which is brilliant. I've met up with quite a few people in real life now and all, apart from one, have been lovely. I have one good friend in particular who I haven't managed to meet up with for a little while but we keep in touch regularly and I hope to see her soon.

My life in the weeks and months before twitter was the darkest of times. I cared for my Mum alone and lost all of my friends in the process. And after my Mum died I was quite simply lost. I didn't know how I was ever going to start my life again.

So for all I have my moans about twitter, it saved my life. It's brought an amazing man into my life who makes me happier than I thought it possible to be. It's brought a new city and new friends and new beginnings. I am so grateful for twitter.

Thank you to all my fab followers. Here's to the next two years!! :)

Twitter

Twitter changed my life. As anyone who knows me on twitter or who has read my blog will know, I met the love of my life on twitter. This led to me moving to the other side of the country to be with him and starting a new life. Without twitter I wouldn't have met Paul and I don't think I'd have ever moved away from my home town but I am so very glad that this is the way things turned out.

I joined twitter after my Mum's death and it helped me immensely with the loneliness and grief that I felt. I am so grateful to my original followers who are still with me now, they got me through that time.

Twitter, therefore, has a big place in my heart and I've always loved it. But recently I find myself becoming more and more irritated by things and people on there; it's just not how it used to be. Twitter has become too serious.

I'm not bothered by how many people I'm following or how many are following back or which number is higher. I just want to enjoy reading my timeline and chatting with people and updating twitter on what's happening in my life. I don't mind if people don't follow me back. Some people do, some don't. Some people are really chatty and some aren't but if I enjoy your tweets or have things in common with you I'll keep following. If you offend me or upset me I'll unfollow without making a scene. I understand if people unfollow me, it's the nature of twitter.

The problem comes when there are people who I used to chat with a lot but in recent times their life and mine have changed and we no longer have anything in common. I don't enjoy reading their tweets as much and I think we've reached the end of the road. But I know if I unfollow that they'll wonder why, that they might be upset so I don't do it. I've seen so many instances of people 'outing' the people who've unfollowed them and being bitchy; it's become a bit of a minefield and it never used to be like this. I much prefer the old days of twitter when people just enjoyed it for what it was. The nature of twitter is that it's not a static thing.

I've lost my twitter mojo in recent days, I hope it returns soon.

Christmas in our new home

Paul and I have had a lovely first Christmas in our new home. It was everything we wanted it to be - it was very relaxing and we loved it just being the two of us. We drank champagne in bed on Christmas morning and opened our presents sat around the Christmas tree. We cooked Christmas lunch together, which turned out perfect and was delicious. We chilled out on the sofa watching Christmas films and TV. It was perfect.

Thoughts of my Mum were in my head but they were nice thoughts of happy memories of Christmases past. We raised our glasses to those who are absent before we ate lunch and we watched the Queen's Speech as it was a tradition of my Mum's to do that.

One of Paul's gifts to me was two gorgeous wooden bookends in the shape of @s. I love books so this was already a perfect present for me but Paul said he got them because they were @s and it seemed special because if it wasn't for @s we wouldn't have met. (We met on Twitter for those who didn't already know).

This Christmas was about moving on for me. It was about allowing myself to hold on to old, happy memories and to still keep to a few old traditions but it was also, more importantly, about allowing myself to focus on the future and to start new traditions with Paul. He is my future and I want us to have wonderful, happy memories of our own Christmases past in years to come. This Christmas was just the beginning of that.

To the future.

Music

A friend on Twitter, @littlemunchkin, posed the question today: What song is your guilty pleasure? I have two songs that I always think of when asked this question. The first is Alcazaar's Crying at the Discoteque. I first heard it on my now all-time favourtite TV show, Queer as Folk and I adore it. Every single time I hear it I have to turn it up and sing along. I often have a little dance too. It never fails to cheer me up. The other song is Aztec Camera's Somewhere in my Heart. This is on my Fantastic 80s CD. My Mum often had this on in the car when we were going on days out. My brother often had it on in his bedroom. When I hear it I remember happy summer days with my family. It never fails to make me smile. I treasure how this song makes me feel.

The power of music always amazes me. How hearing a particular song takes you right back to a particular time in your life. It can make you so happy or so sad and sometimes it makes you both at the same time.

Music has always been hugely important in my life. My Mum had a very eclectic taste and I grew up hearing her play her records. I was surrounded by music.

I hear In My Life by The Beatles and it reminds me of my Mum. It was one of her all-time favourite songs. We had it played at her funeral and it was perfect. The lyrics are so meaningful.

I hear Always Look on the Bright Side of Life and it reminds me of hearing it in the car with Mum after  she was diagnosed with cancer. She laughed and said she wanted it played at her funeral. Then she heard the line "Life's a piece of shit when you look at it' and said she couldn't have that because older members of our family would freak out if they heard bad language in church. This was when I told her I would wear red and joked that they would be so outraged by that they wouldn't notice the swear word in the song. Mum laughed so hard, it was the last time I saw her properly laugh. She made me promise I'd wear red. I kept my promise.

I hear The Steve Miller Band's The Joker and remember my first proper kiss. 

I hear The Searchers' Needles and Pins and I remember going on fairground rides with my brother at Butlins when we were kids. 

I hear Sisqo's The Thong Song and Aaliyah's Try Again and I remember the amazing times I had with my best friend just before she died. 

I hear The Nolans' I'm in the Mood for Dancing and I remember my wonderful Nan dancing with us at my cousin's 18th birthday party. My Nan died the following year and I miss her even now, twelve years on. I always remember that party as such a happy time though.

I hear Crocodile Rock and I remember singing with my Mum at the top of our voices at an Elton John concert; we both lost our voices for a whole day after that gig! 

I hear Stay by Shakespear's sister and I remember being 13 years old and in hospital for the first time waiting to have my appendix out. Top of the Pops was on and that song was number one; the doctor said the video was about a girl dying. Not what I needed to be thinking about!

I hear Amarillo by Tony Christie (and Peter Kay... sort of) and although I'm not a fan of the song, my whole family is so it reminds me of great times with them. At my brother's wedding reception it got requested and played three times. I grudgingly joined the end of the chain of people dancing in a follow my leader style around the room. It was all caught on video. It makes me emotional now because my brother's wedding was only five years ago and in that time we've lost our Mum, our Grandad and a friend. They're all on that video dancing to Amarillo. Bittersweet memories but I'm glad I have them and I'm glad the video exists.

I hear Whitney Houston's I Wanna Dance with Somebody and I remember the embarrassment of winning the disco dancing competition at club at Butlins when I was about 8 years old. I had to walk on stage in front of everyone to get my prize!

I hear The Prodigy's Spitfire and I remember my poor heartbroken brother and his friends, all just 18, carrying their friend Ash's coffin into his funeral. It was haunting and heartbreaking.

I hear The Way We Were by Barbra Streisand and I remember it being on the radio when I came running home from school with my GCSE results. I remember my mum hugging me and then sobbing with happiness at what I'd achieved.

I hear Bye Bye Baby by The Bay City Rollers and I remember crying in the back of the car on the way home from a holiday and my holiday romance when I was 15. This song came on the radio and my brother, then aged 12, thought it was hilariously appropriate. He sang that song at me over and over again for days and days and days. Whenever we're at a party together now though one of us always requests it because it makes us both laugh now.

I hear Mambo No. 5 by Lou Bega and remember it being on the radio all the time when I was learning to drive. I also remember my Mum laughing hysterically when this song was on The Royle Family while Jim was decorating.

I heard Groovejet by Spiller on the radio that other day when we were driving to the house to do more renovating. It made me smile. I had somehow known I would hear that song while we were working on the house. Last time my Mum decorated the kitchen she had the radio on and I remember her phoning me that night saying that she had heard Groovejet about a million times while decorating. She could never hear the song after that without commenting on how it drove her mad while doing the kitchen up. It's funny that I heard it while being driven mad by decorating too. 

Music has a huge part to play in how Paul and I got together too. After our initial conversation about books a lot of our tweeting was about music. Paul is a real music lover, it's his passion in life. It's a huge part of who he is. I love song lyrics and always had books where, as a teenager and beyond, I wrote down lyrics that I loved; that inspired me; that spoke to me. I had recently seen the lyrics to a Madness song called One Better Day and was inspired to copy down these lyrics... 

'Walking round you sometimes hear the sunshine 

Beating down in time with the rhythm of your shoes 

The feeling of arriving when you've nothing left to lose' 

because they jumped out at me. They caught exactly how I was feeling at the time. You can imagine how strange/amazing it was when Paul randomly tweeted this lyric; it wasn't even to me, it was a public tweet. I immediately tweeted back the song title and he was stunned that I knew it. From then on he often tweeted song lyrics and I nearly always knew what they were. One night just before he said goodnight to me he told me to download What If I by Ben's Brother. I'd never even heard of this band but I trusted his judgement. I listened to that song on a loop for ages and couldn't work out if he was trying to tell me something about how he felt about me through that song. About a week and a half later we met up in real life and the rest, as they say, is history! We try to regularly have music nights at home, we're planning one this weekend and I can't wait.

The strange thing is that the songs I've talked about aren't necessarily my favourites songs; some of the songs I don't even like but they remind me of a really happy time. If I was asked for a list of my favourite songs, it would be a completely different list. I don't think events have quite the same impact for me without music. Just about everything in my life has a song attached to it, I can't think of many things where music didn't play a part. The power of music is a wondeful thing.

How I came to be here...

I’ve been thinking of starting a blog for ages but every time I come close to signing up to Blogger I chicken out. I’m now learning that sharing an experience is helpful and have decided that blogging will be a good thing for me at this point in my life.

I’ve had a very up and down couple of years and it has had a huge effect on me. I’m beginning to realise that to have difficulty coping after what I’ve been through is normal and not something to be ashamed about.

Two years ago I was in my second year of Uni as a mature student and life was on the up. Then the bottom fell out of my world when my wonderful Mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I immediately moved back home and I cared for her on my own 24 hours a day until she died seven months later. I literally did everything for her on my own. I never got a second to process what was happening, it all got held inside me.

I have issues relating to my Mum’s illness that I am still working through but I know I will get through them. I’m sure things about it will crop up on here from time to time. I’m trying to share more and not hold things inside because I’m learning the hard way that it simply doesn’t do you any good.

My life began to unravel after Mum died. My long-term relationship broke down. I had no support from anywhere; all my friends disappeared when Mum got ill and they never came back. It was a lonely and distressing time for me and I didn’t know how I would ever get me back again.

Despite my then belief that social networking was for weirdos I succumbed and joined twitter. It quite literally changed my life.  My world had become so tiny and I didn’t know how to begin again but gradually I felt less lonely as there was always someone to chat to on there day or night.

And then there was Paul.

We got talking over books and got to know each other through song lyrics. He stayed up all night chatting to me on twitter when my insomnia was at its worst and I will always be grateful to him for that. It was the first kindness anyone had shown me since before my Mum was ill.

We met up in real life. I was going through what I now know to be a breakdown but it didn’t put him off me. He helped pick me up and put me back together. Even on my worst days, he can make me laugh.

I moved in with him in October and we’re now in the process of buying our first house together. I am so happy with him and it’s just amazing to be making all these plans for the future. I’m beginning to look forward again rather than back.

I miss my Mum every day and wish she could have met Paul, I wish she could see where I am now. I grieve for her still and I will for as long as it takes. I know she would’ve have loved Paul though and she would have been eternally grateful for how much he has helped me.

Paul has shown me that there are good people in this world, people that will love you and help you even in your darkest moments. I am so grateful to have him in my life.

I’m coming to realise that there is a light at the end of every tunnel but it takes as long as it takes to stand in the light and leave the darkness behind you. But that is ok.