July 30^th 2014

By Grace O’Reilly

Well today has just been one of those days.  Katie, one of my dearest friends rang me to bear me with the bad news that  one of our other friends and longest I may add, her Mum  passed away last night after a long battle with the dreaded C word, cancer.  My love goes out to Yvo, Dave and Paul at the loss of their Mum.  Muriel will be missed.  I have known her since I was 4 years old and to this day Yvo swears (although I can’t remember) that I ran out of the bath tub but naked and told her and Mur that I was going to be a stripper when I grew up and that was when I was about 5.  Needless to say I didn’t become a stripper of any kind, not even the wall-paper stripper.

I was minding my friend’s son for a few hours and between him, Olivia and Ben was ran ragged.  He drank milk for me and his Mum was even shocked for he never drinks milk but when little Sean realised that Spiderman LOVES milk well he went bananas for it.  Those bone, those bones do need calcium.  Sara watched Livi for a bit and instead of relaxing Ben has had a temperature all day.  So the good old Nurofen (strawberry flavour) and Calpol are doing their job FINALLY as he is JUST asleep.

Olivia got out of Bed earlier and fell and hit her eye off her princess bed.  She looks more like Bruised Ella than Cinderella the poor pet.  It looks like Mike Tyson or Katie Taylor popped in for a visit.  She will certainly be POPEYE come the morning.  My mother in law came up to assure me that Olivia was ok.

It’s 9.30PM and I have just eaten.  God whoever knew that us Mums need to eat (in the minds of a 3 and 1 year old I am simply invincible).  Goodness knows they didn’t know how close I was to eating them.  Having just devoured a microwave meal (not my usual I swear, although admittedly whilst at age 30 I am not a Jamie Oliver but can now according to my hubby Simon do a really good scrambled egg) and much needed glass of vino, I retired to my new office to write this piece because my new goal is to write SOMEthing everyday. 

Thanks Aunt Avril for a chat and your usual words of wisdom I need to hear on a regular basis.  Avril is not only my Aunt in law but a true  friend helping me through so much of late.

My bath is just about ran so face mask and bubbles her I come.

 Goodnight !!!! zzzz xxx

Weigh to go

Grace O’Reilly

I have always had issues and insecurities about my weight.  Maybe that’s just me being a typical woman living in a modern World or maybe that’s just me!  All I know is that I have never been happy with the way that I look.  I was bullied in school and I was called fat and had “Grace Downes is a fat cow” written in graffiti on a wall in a housing estate near to where I lived by a “supposed” best friend, NOT!  I have had 2 women very close to me in my life on complete opposite side of the weight scale.  One was obese and has a pair of her old trousers in the attic and can fit her whole self and one in ONE of the legs now.  The other woman was severely anorexic and at her lightest weighed just over 6 stone and that as an adult mother of 2 young boys.  Neither is better than the other to be too thin or overweight is just not healthy.  A lot of the time weight issues stem from physiological and not physical problems.

Last year I was at one of my heaviest EVER (I think 2 years prior to that again I was heavier but don’t actually know the number) at 13 stone 3 lbs.  I am now 9 months on 10 stone 7 lbs.  I still have a way to go until I reach target weight but have lost more than I have to lose and mentally I have gained so much.  In October 2013 I rang Anne Dixon from Unislim in distress.  For my short height of 5”1 I was weighed in 3 days later at my first Unislim class at 13 stone 3 lbs.  I was so disgusted with myself.  I had rang Anne as I was literally on the last leg of being miserable with my weight.  I ripped the whole ass out of a brand new pair of trousers my mother had bought for me and was so ashamed.  I had only got them over the top of my legs when I heard the sound of material ripping and my heart broke too.

It was a blessing though because the new lease of life that Anne, Jan and all the members in Unislim as well as my friends and family have given me is unreal.  I am a changed person for the better.  I have a much more positive mental attitude now.  I am outgoing and bubbly and ENJOY getting dressed up and shopping now (although our bank account doesn't like nor really allow for that) but that being said Penny’s and charity shops are great and having lost so much weight it is a nice feeling to go into a shop and try something on. 

After I had my 2 children I dreaded shopping.  I liked (rather thought I liked) the idea of food shopping and tossing crap like chocolate in the basket to gorge on later.  The truth of it is and was it didn’t make me feel good just worse wear as with clothes shopping I don’t feel bad.

As Anne said last Christmas dressed with a Turkey hat on her head “If you gobble, gobble gobble, you will wobble, wobble, wobble but if you nibble, nibble, nibble, you can jiggle, jiggle, jiggle.  It is true when I dress up now I feel sexy and confident.  My husband Simon always told me I was beautiful and he loved and loves me but I never loved Me and that was the problem.  I can look in the mirror now and not cry.  I can get up in the morning and choose to dress to style with use of my trusty U Magazine or simply be in my pj’s because I am having a lazy day with fun and movies with out 3 and 1 year old rather than because I feel I can’t be bothered getting dressed, going outside the door because God forbid I may scare the kitty cat next door into oblivion at the sight of me. 

Now I dress up and feel good.  I am not vain by any stretch but am just becoming more satisfied and accepting of who I am.  I enjoy getting my hair done and buying new SMALLER clothes.  It  makes me feel good inside and out.  I have more energy, get up and go and drive now too, which apart from for myself and indeed my husband it is great for my two youngsters Olivia and Ben that I can play and keep up with them specially now the little man is on the move.

Yes I know that it is only July but Anne (with good reason) gave us a picture with a Christmas tree.  Every time we lose weight we colour in a bauble but are NOT allowed to touch the star until Christmas week when we can all shine together.  I was only down half a lb this week but that is in my old mind now I am like I was down half and lb GO ME.  If you have ever seen a half lb of meat or indeed fat and think that was lost in ONE week well it is good going.  I hope to be my target weight by Christmas and then not only will my Christmas tree light up but so will myself.

I wrote this one night after a nightmare about bullying years ago.

It’s not quite a poem, not quite a prose.  It’s just my brain on paper or now rather in print.

Started back to writing my bullying novel tonight after weeks of another “break” from it.  Even after Bacardi breezer orange the pain writing it is still there.  It is raw, but I guess that is for me what helps me write.It’s raw like the carrots in my kitchen but at least my words are therapeutic unlike the carrots even if they are tasty.  Okay drifting away from subject compleastly as I do as it hurts but has to be done. 

Below is typed exactly as written

Do people really think twice about the damage they do to others when they bully them “physically”?

Is it a power thing to make them feel more powerful and their prey feel less powerful?

Heart wrenching, stomach churning feelings are all the victim has

That and humiliation, confusion and exclusion.

From the boy in 1^st babies kicking me in the yard and scraping my glasses, to the teacher telling Mum that “I was stupid”, to the bitchy bullies in school seding cards and invites and holiday gifts to practically everybody in the class but me.  WHY???

Then I met a “friend”, popularity set in to our gang but no to me as such – I was just a nobody, an extra in their group.

I got set upon by my “own”.

Nasty notes and pictures sent around, garffitti on walls that I’m a fat cow.

I picked myself up again and made more “friends”

Slowly things happened again

Too much to explain.

A change of school

Exclusion again set in

Then I met my love rat

5 years together and he cheats and befriends my greatest EX-“friend” bully, as she screws his friend’s brother. 

This writing piece is like my brain, all over the place

People, years, events, scattered memories, slightly faded like sun-bleached objects

But definitely still there like a heart sore

Years later, settled, married and a mother

I awake so I write this

Do people even realise the damage and extent of what they have done?

People are like objects in the sense that if something breaks it can be repaired

Take shoes....

The sole can be replaced and repaired time over time but as the damage of time keeps weakening the sole it will eventually just LOOK good and FEEL useless on the inside

Like a person’s heart and sole can only take so much.

Just think in the future – how would you feel if roles or soles were reversed or if the shoes were swapped and the bullies shoes put on other feet!

By Grace O’Reilly

13/01/14

Dark Days

By Grace O’Reilly

Short, dark days and long black nights.

The daytime one third of the 24 hour cycle.

The daylight a constant feel of “half hour before lights are switched on”;

for it’s that grey, bleak darkness.

Too dark to see and enjoy the day;

and too bright for artificial light.

Nightime now and for the next 4 months;

two thirds pitch and almost pitch black darkness.

Our lives plunged into Mr Winter’s life!

OCT 2012

Today is a miserable grey day in October.  It’s wet and dark and next week is Halloween.  This is going to be Olivia’s second Halloween.  She is almost 21 months old and is all chatter and running about the place.  As I write this, sitting on my couch in the family home in our sitting room, Olivia is running around in her nappy, Peppa Pig Top and a pink knitted cardigan in her nappy watching Dora the Explorer and asking if Mummy is on her laptop.  She says “Mameee, puter” and grins at me with her big sparkling eyes.

Earlier today, we went down the town in Gorey, Co Wexford to do some errands around the town, while Daddy got some much needed shut eye before his night shift today.  He is a security officer and on Wednesdays he also had First Aid before work making it a REEEAAALLLY long shift.  Olivia hates Daddy going as much as he hates leaving her.  She’ll say to me “Mummy, Daddy gone”, and vice versa with Simon if I’m not here for some reason.  While out earlier we popped into Aldi and as we don’t own a car loaded some small bits of shopping on top of the buggy, while in the queue.  Olivia decided NOW of all times in a busy lunch time rush was the best time to start playing “chuck all the shopping on the ground one by one” game.  As soon as I’d pick one thing up, out flew another shopping item.  Thankfully there was nothing breakable.  It wasn’t her being naughty, it WAS genuinely a game to her.  I text Simon who was NOW just up to make me a strong and much needed and earned cup of tea and to pop “Doctors” on RTE 1 for me.  When I got in he changed Olivia and gave her, her afternoon bottle before her nap.

http://www.brayarts.com/

From Monday in the Martello x

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.brayarts.com%2F&h=XAQFfAO6l

Link to my 1st public writing performnace for BRAY ART'S - Monday 7th Oct 2013 upstairs in Maretello, Bray sharing my poem "Ben" and short story "Private Number Calling" published in "Woman's Way" last Nov 2012

Please listen and Enjoy :)