wake up to your red flags
& level up
CW: drug abuse, suicide
“Wake up,” I shouted at the top of my voice, I thought it was hilarious. It was two o’clock in the morning, sometime in 1985 and I was walking home from a club in Oldham with the new love of my life. I’d had my eye on Graham for a while; he was so handsome, clever, interesting, and funny. In this moment, we were so excited to be together. Years later, I find myself returning to this moment. I often wondered why I thought it was important to shout, “Wake up!” Was it because I wanted everyone else to join in the joy that I felt (I’m sure they didn’t at 2am) or was it my intuition telling me to wake up to the truth of what was to come?
We were passionately in love and yet it wasn’t long until we had some challenges around honesty and trust. Graham told me that he had a female friend in Sweden who he had met whilst Interrailing. She came to the UK and while Graham spent some time with her, I tried my best to be very cool about it. But I absolutely hated it! I was horribly suspicious and then when I found a ‘love is…” card from her, we argued. I forgave him, but I still slept with someone else. Was it revenge? Possibly? He guessed and I denied it, so we stayed together, the lies sitting between us. By 1988 we were married and apparently happy to imagine that everything would be wonderful from this point onwards.
We bought a house. It needed renovating but somehow the work seemed to be taking a lot longer than we anticipated. Often, I would go round to the house and Graham would be chilling out with his brothers. I sensed that something strange was going on, but I didn’t know what. I knew that Graham had taken speed and smoked the odd joint and I wasn’t happy with that. I was very anti-drugs and believed it would always end badly. I was ok with getting drunk, but drugs were a massive no-no.
Strange things started to happen. Graham would go missing for hours, saying he’d been to the shop and met his brother… or he would lock himself in the bathroom for hours. He started to look dishevelled, which was the opposite of the Graham that I met. He had been promoted at work, but left for a better job which he soon lost. I rang his boss to find out why and he told me, “He was hardly ever here.” I could feel myself begin to panic.
Graham and his brothers gaslit me with denials whenever I challenged what was going on and I cried a lot. They said I was imagining things and that there was nothing going on, but all the while, my intuition was screaming at me, “You are not going mad!” So as the spoons disappeared from the kitchen (I was watching ‘Traffic’, a drug smuggling mini-series), I began to suspect that they were taking drugs together.
Eventually the day came when I found Graham slumped in the bathroom, a spoon by his side, completely off his head in another world. I had to face it; he was a heroin addict. Oh, the shame, the guilt, the responsibility. None of it was mine, but I carried it. I had so many unanswered questions; Why? What was wrong? Surely men like Graham didn’t become drug addicts and yet right in front of me was this crumpled mess of a man.
I tried to be supportive. I went to the drug information centre in Oldham. They told me to tell his parents, but I just couldn’t do it. Things got worse, Graham was in denial and things went missing more and more. He kept asking me for money. I rang the Samaritans and cried; I thought it would be easier to be dead than experience life this way. Apparently Graham felt the same way. I came home from work and there was a noose hanging from the loft at the top of the stairs.
Another day I came home and there was a hose pipe attached to the car exhaust, feeding into the driver’s window in the garage. They were all cries for help, but I didn’t know how to help him. It was so hard to accept that I couldn’t help him. Instead, I had an affair with a colleague at work. It was a distraction and a mess. I dreaded going home and the affair just compounded the shame and guilt that I felt.
I was sitting on the sofa one Saturday afternoon and Graham walked into the lounge to ask me for money. He looked desperate and wild eyed and I said, “No”. He sat down next to me and put a Stanley knife blade next to my knee, “If you don’t give me money, I will cut you”. I don’t really know what happened next, all I remember is running up the road and jumping on a bus. I didn’t know where I was going, I just had to get away. How could that human being be the same gentle, kind, loving man that I’d met a few years before? I was devastated and broken.
I went to my parents’ house. They didn’t even know what heroin was. I rang Graham’s parents and told them; they came round, and we sat together struggling with the reality of what was happening. Graham went to live with his parents to go ‘cold turkey’. We did get back together, but it was too late. He went back to heroin; I went back to my affair.
I left Graham and it took a very long time to process what had happened and let go of the misplaced shame and guilt. Slowly and surely, life got better. I found a new job and by chance, I ended up in Personnel (HR in the old days) and that’s when I started to wake up to my potential.
I recently went back to the street where I lived with Graham and it felt so small and narrow. I know that I would have suffocated in that environment. I had narrowed my path to the most obvious; marriage, children, work. This heartbreaking experience had sucked me in and then pushed me out to the unknown. It was the most significant and challenging time and as I look back, I can see that I was being invited to level up, and to know the truth of who I am.
I’m sorry to say that both Graham and his younger brother died from their drug abuse.
Through this experience, amongst other things, I learned that I can’t change someone else and I am not responsible for their happiness. I could see that the relationship dynamics between Graham and his mum were being played out between us. Although I continue to encounter lots of red flags, I am quicker to spot them and feel free to take action to resolve or move away from them.
Looking beyond our personal relationships, though, red flags are magnifying in the world around us - here are a few:
Fewer cash machines and more companies not accepting cash, moving towards a central currency and significant levels of financial control
Coercive medical intervention without proper testing and honesty about the potential dangers, or the other options available
Wars to enable land grabs and revenue generation, while increasing fear, chaos, power and control
Slow poisoning of humans through toxins and metals in our air, water and food
Significant levels of sugar in nearly every packaged food product
Genetically modified food
Corporations pretending to be government bodies
Pharmaceutical companies dictating health care policy
Financial institutions lying about how they operate and the fact that money is no longer backed by gold (or anything), just numbers on a screen
Segregation of people so that they fight with each other and lose their power and connection
Indoctrination masquerading as education
Mind control through the media and increasing levels of censorship
Encouraging disconnection to spirituality
Enslaving humans (and most of them are not aware)
Many of these red flags might seem inconceivable, too big to do anything about, or perhaps you feel a surge of resistance to looking at them. But if we become aware of our own red flags and take action, we will start to move towards true freedom for everyone. Together we are amazingly powerful, can you imagine how wonderful our futures will be?
My articles are always an invitation and this one is to become aware of the red flags in your life. As you read this, the most important one will probably be appearing in your awareness. See what you don’t want to see. Stay with it and without blaming anyone else, question what there is for you to know about it, so that you can start to take action and live the life that you truly want to live.
The challenges in our lives are always an opportunity to get clearer and level up. Deep down you know what is best for you, and the more you start to trust your innate wisdom, the more you will experience true freedom.
Much love
Pauline