Quiet thoughts

Yesterday, as I worked, I thought about whether I would move back to London again. For months this has been the expectation, that eventually I will remake my home in the city and pick up where I left off. But I’m starting to see that that might not be me anymore. Living in the capital had always lent me a certain confidence, an identity, but that no longer fits. Now I live by the sea, and having dealt with the fact that it’s my hometown, which to begin with felt shameful, as if I had returned with my tail between my legs, a failure of some sort, I am finding a new appreciation of space. The sea and the surrounding countryside speak to me. I went to the beach this morning; the sky had clouded over after days of non-stop sunshine and less people were around, and I sat quietly, drinking a frothy cappuccino and watching the horizon, everything so very blue. Maybe it was the tide that called me back home last year – perhaps growing up beside the sea means you will always be drawn back, the tumultuous energy caught in your soul. I don’t know if this is where I will stay, but London no longer holds such an appeal for me – this is a new feeling.

I think there are cracks forming in the armour I wear, fissures that are letting the light in. My first instinct is to get out the soldering iron and draw down the portcullis. This whole ‘feeling more alive’ gig is, frankly, terrifying. If I open a door in my heart it will all come unraveling out, like a parachute, and no matter how much I try I won’t be able to fold it back in again. I think I was more comfortable being Miss Haversham… I will wait to see what the wind brings me, painfully aware of the fact that the roar of my heart could overwhelm whatever comes.

A letter to the universe

There’s a swirling energy inside me tonight; it feels rather sexual and needs to be channelled into words, pictures, song – something other than what I think it really wants to become, though in truth tonight I yearn to be kissed. Today was a beautiful day, sunny with a fresh breeze from the sea that cooled my skin as I walked around town, dressed in a silk camisole, linen pants and flip flops, completely unadorned. My senses feel so much more alive in this period than they ever have done before. The flowers are brighter, the sunset is achingly beautiful, food tastes sweeter, wine is more delicious than I ever remember it being. I wear perfume and it’s as if I have painted my skin with colour.

I’m starting to realise that my new passion for self-portraiture, which has been so very healing to my self-esteem and self-image, is also happening because I yearn to be seen. It feels like a very long time since someone looked into my heart and saw the Susannah I am when clothes and titles and smoke-screens fall away, and I am simply me, naked as I was when my mother gave birth to me. For the longest time, through this journey of grief, I have felt invisible, undefined, my edges blurring until I blend into the background. But as the apathy of last week falls away I am suddenly in sharp relief against my surroundings: I have shape and colour and texture. I’m not entirely sure what I’m trying to say here. Perhaps it is simply that I am alive again. And perhaps my heart is really healing… and perhaps, just perhaps, I will be seen again one day.

A break in transmission…

I feel like I am on holiday from my life – the ‘apathy stage’ of grief is what my therapist called it yesterday, where there is no point to anything and I have no energy to try and find it. The heat isn’t helping, though the storm clouds have rolled in this evening, so perhaps we will all find relief in the rain. I sent the first eight chapters back to my agent today but I am not happy with them. I sent them to have them out of my face, the weight of the book heavy on my back. Revisiting the past has been difficult, particularly in this apathetic state I’ve been cultivating the last few days. I want the storm clouds to roll into my flat and toss me about like a boat at sea – I want there to be some change. The days feel so long, this heat making me lethargic, but I know this too will pass.

Tonight I drink a glass of Bordeaux,  a bottle of wine my mother gave me to enjoy once I’d sent the chapters, her hopeful encouraging face so sweet I could have cried. I know this book is important – not to the world at large (the world at large doesn’t care whether I finish it or not) but important to me, to my healing, to our story, to restoring my faith in myself that I CAN finish a project, that I CAN write. And after battling with it for the last few weeks, a ray of inspiration shone down last night, and words flowed – shy words, but words nonetheless. I saved the document, backed it up, and emailed it out to an office in London this afternoon. It’s done. Until the next time…

Sunday Scribblings: With baggage

I worry that I have too much baggage – not the normal baggage one has after a few failed relationships, the disappointments in childhood, the neuroses about oneself – no, I worry that I have deluxe all-singing, all-dancing baggage that no man will ever be able to handle. Not only will a new man in my life have to contend with the fact that the man I loved before him died while I was still very deeply in love with him, but there will be (I hope) a hardback book sitting on my bookshelf that proves it, that celebrates the love, commiserates the loss and describes the long journey back to wholeness.

If the situation were reversed, I honestly don’t know how I’d feel about a new man saying to me ‘my last girlfriend died – oh, and I wrote a book about it. Here, have a look…’ There are things about the past that surely should stay in the past, but if this book is published, if I share the sorry tale with the world, I will also be sharing it with the next man in my life. He may not want to read it, of course, but if the path I’m on is to become a published author, then this first book will be out there – it will, I hope, be publicised and reviewed and read, and he won’t be able to avoid it.

I think this is the first time I’ve written here about the idea of being with someone new. I’ve thought about it. I’ve guilt-tripped over my baggage, then stashed it away in a corner only to go back and unpack it time and time again. I went on that one futile date the other week and told that man about my loss – not in great detail, only as part of the reason why I live in this town – and he didn’t blanch at the admission, didn’t run screaming from the bar in terror, but he has also not contacted me since that evening. So what does that tell me? Certainly that we were completely incompatible and that neither of us felt the need to meet again, but I can’t help but wonder if perhaps the weight of the baggage sitting on my shoulders was a big turn off (for want of a better expression).

Yesterday I received a package in the post from my writing sister Delia . Included among the treasures she sent me was a mojo bag that contains precious stones hand-picked by her for me. This talisman from her heart to mine will go everywhere with me now – I will let the stones absorb some of my worries, and boost my energies when I need it. And I think I will also tuck a little bit of my baggage into the mojo bag too – perhaps the stones will work their magic on the backpacks and suitcases I’m dragging behind me…

For more Sunday Scribblings, go here

Delurking Thursday

Talking to two trusted friends about this yesterday, I see that as I reveal my face – the outward expression of who I am – I undertake another layer of healing. For so long there was only one person I wanted to see me, one person who seemingly knew me inside and out (but even then missed out on so many of the small things he took for granted). How could I let myself be seen if he could no longer see me? I still wrestle with this question, but I also find myself wanting to see myself, to make friends with this new woman I am creating, to learn to accept her flaws as well her new-grown strengths (both internal and external). Naturally my first reaction is to think that this is wicked vanity on my part – who taught me not to show myself off? My Victorian grandmother? My mother? Me? Don’t make a fuss, Susannah. Pull down your skirt, pull up your socks. Be quiet. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Shush now… Little girls should be seen and not heard.

But despite the ghostly voices chiding me in my head, I post pictures on my blog, my portal into the world at large, and I feel nervous. I worry I will be seen as vain, seen as showing off… yet wasn’t I the girl who took naked self-portraits for three years at art college, who exhibited them and asked for criticism? Why is it, now I am in my thirties, I worry about revealing too much? I sat with this question last night, and the only response was this: you are claiming your space.