Round in circles

“The completeness of self is found when we can be alone and when we can bring all of who we are to another, receiving and being received fully.” ~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation

I think this blog has become quite a truthful reflection of what grief is like. Looking back over this month’s posts I see the upward sweep of the rollercoaster, as my emotions lift and reach more positive hopeful heights, then the crashing plummet back down. Yesterday I sat in the bumper car, holding on for dear life, waiting for the ride to begin again. Unable to move foward or back I sat at this computer and tried to write a blog post. I tried for an hour, writing round and round in circles, not making sense, the words dribbling into moans, complaints, frustration pouring out. There was (and still is) a mountain of work I have to do, but yesterday I felt so overwhelmed I couldn’t even open the document.  So I gave up on the post and forced myself to walk to the sea, journal in hand, and sat at a table in the café and I wrote my thoughts out until my hand ached. What started as anger and confusion became lulled by the sound of the waves breaking and the movement of my pen, writing out a conversation with myself. Every stubborn thought I tackled was left wilting on the page, as I wrote further into how I was feeling.

I realized that I am waiting – waiting to be healed, waiting for life to change, waiting for someone to come along and make it better. And as I wrote my frustration out, I acknowledged that I am still, STILL, waiting for him to come back, waiting for him to not be dead, for the world to be as it was. But I’ve come too far to go back to the old me now; I am irrevocably changed. Moving to this town was supposed to be temporary, yet now I find I am living here, encased in my solitude, occasionally broken with time spent with friends, but mostly I am on my own. And as I burrow into myself and examine every aspect, every atom, I discover that, if I had my time over, perhaps I would not have chosen him. I see the truths of our relationship and I see the flaws too, and the me I am now knows she would not walk that path again.

Perhaps there comes a time when we must divorce the dead, when we must end the relationship in our own way, having been denied (in my case) an ending we could control. Perhaps I’m trying too hard to fall out of love with him in order to be able to find space in my heart to love again.  I’m finding it hard to remember why men and women get together, why anyone would bother with all that fuss.  I worry that as my strength grows I am becoming a monster; the word intimidating is one I have heard too often. Even my mother told me she found me thus in an afternoon of honest chat last year, after my therapist had pulled out yet another layer of childhood angst and I felt the need to talk to her about it. And she came back with her very quiet admission. And yes, maybe I can be a bit too direct, and maybe I can seem confident to those who don’t know me, but it only takes a breath of wind for me to crumple. I am confident and I am an emotional wreck; I am strong and I am weak; I have big dreams and no willpower to achieve them. Today I am very far away from being intimidating.

I think the real fear is that in truth we are so very powerful we could take over the world. What would happen if we took all the love and rage and crippling insecurity and doubt we carry on our backs and used it to propel us forward rather than hold us back? What would happen?

Landscape

Isn’t it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience? Isn’t it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I’m alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky – as though

all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.

~ Mary Oliver, Dream Work

For more poetic inspiration, go here

One of those days

Sometimes it’s hard to get out of bed. Sometimes it’s hard to pick up the phone and reach out. Sometimes it’s hard to motivate yourself to switch the computer on and do the work you know you have to do to pay the bills and keep the wolf from the door. Sometimes it’s hard to let go of the past and step into the now. Sometimes you can’t believe that good things will happen to you and that the future is bright, that all that longing for a career that fulfills you and means something will come to fruition. Sometimes you wonder why everyone else has it so easy and for you it’s so very very hard. Sometimes you want to let go of that pity party and slap yourself across the face. Sometimes, just sometimes, you wish he would come back from the dead and take you in his arms and tell you that he is sorry he had to go, that he is sorry he never answered your question, that he wishes things had been different. Sometimes you let yourself think about that too much.

Sunday Scribblings: My monster

Something weird is happening in my body. I think I have been so busy taking care of my emotional health I have ignored the rest of me. My body is crying out for attention, and not just that from a man’s hand. This week I’ve had trouble smoking – my throat has felt sore, the smoke hasn’t gone down well.  Normally I sit at my desk all day, working and smoking, trapped in an insidious routine I’ve felt unable to break. I get through twenty cigarettes a day, sometimes more, sometimes (rarely) less. THIS IS NOT GOOD, I know.

My trouble is, I don’t know myself without cigarettes. When my ex and I were trying for a baby I hardly smoked at all and was on a health kick that lasted for a year until the day we decided the pregnancy wasn’t happening because our relationship wasn’t happening anymore. Then the cigarettes were needed to counterbalance the stress and emotional upset. I’ve always been a ‘stress smoker’, using cigarettes as a crutch. In the last year and a half I have smoked enough to take ten years off my life, I am sure. Extenuating circumstances maybe, and for the longest time I didn’t give a shit about the state of my body, but now things are changing. Now that I’ve decided I will continue to live and see what the future holds, perhaps I need to think about ensuring I have a future.

I started smoking when I was fifteen – I was one of the rebellious girls who really did think that smoking was cool. All the men I have had relationships with have smoked – it even got to the stage where I thought a man who didn’t smoke wasn’t very manly, brainwashed by the Jim Morrison archetype of the daredevil who smoked, drank in excess and played Russian roulette with his health – who lived (his probably very short) life on the edge.

I’ve survived the most devastating experience of my life yet still I’m not sure I can give up cigarettes. Where is my strength? And what will it take for me to let go of the idea that writers smoke, that creative people have a bit of that juicy passionate darkness in their soul that lures them to destructive habits. Where did I learn this myth?

I was originally going to write about fear as the monster in our lives, about how it stops us reaching out and trying new things, how it keeps us tied to the safe and familiar and short-circuits our desire for the new and unknown, but then I realized I would be writing that for someone else’s benefit. I’m starting to forge a new relationship with my fear. I’m still scared out of my wits most of the time, but my hunger for life and new experiences is starting to take over. I’m out-growing this cage of safety; I’m not sure what my limitations are anymore so I’m prepared to push against my old boundaries and see how far I can go. I’m aware that I may well fall at the first hurdle, or lose my nerve and retreat back in to my cage, but this is not stopping me wanting change in my life.

So the first change I have made is to stop smoking my beloved menthol cigarettes: for the last three days I have switched to rolling tobacco. This is a small but significant change as I have already broken the habit of reaching for a cigarette every twenty minutes. Now I have to roll one and by the time I have done that and fiddled around with relighting the damn thing every few minutes, I have lost the urge to smoke. So far, I am down to ten roll-ups a day (most of those half-smoked). My friends, this is huge progress in the land of me. Next up: I leave this small town, get a book deal and live happily ever after (with a non-smoker).

More monsters here

Sunday Scribblings: Who else can I still be?

“Tell me what you ache for. I don’t want to hear one more dysfunctional family history as an explanation for your current human frailties. Let me taste your stories in the salt of the tears I brush from your eyelashes. I long for a slow-motion meander in the getting- familiar places. I want to spiral close, almost touching, to the place where we can feel the heat in the air between us, an unhurried journey as we sift through new scents of each other, letting them linger in our nostrils, breathing them in deeply, allowing our bodies and hearts to taste the impulse to move towards each other before we move…”

~ from The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

I’m glad I missed last week’s Sunday Scribblings prompt as I know it would have encouraged a maudlin post from me, and right now, where I am in my heart, I only want to look forwards. The past has been plundered and pulled apart and slowly, gently, I am letting it rest. Today is overcast and windy, reminding me that autumn is coming and the summer will be gone all too soon, and as I sit here with my rooibos tea I wonder what the next season will bring me.

Who else can I still be?

I can still be an author; I can, and will, give birth to my stories and send them out into the world. I can still be a loving daughter, sister and friend, and most of all, I can give my mended heart to another. I can be a girlfriend, a muse, a partner, a wife. For the longest time I have found it unthinkable to imagine sharing my life with another man – the rooms were already occupied with complicated baggage piled up high against the door, blocking the way. Yet now there is space here, inside me… space not created by neediness, or desperation or fear. Simply the space for the safekeeping of another’s dreams, nestled alongside my own. There is more of me to be shared now – and quietly, tentatively, I acknowledge this and send it out to the universe.

Tell me what you ache for… I ache to be touched again; I ache for someone in my bed. I ache to be seen, and to look inside another’s heart and listen to their stories. To share what I have learnt, and to grow, to fully inhabit this new shape I have become. I yearn to travel the world and collect new ingredients to add to the recipe of me. I yearn to let go of the selfish part of me and give myself over to the mothering of a child. I yearn to learn yoga and take better care of my body. I yearn to be the fullest expression of who I am, inside and out, wings spread wide, catching the upward breeze, and flying high.

For more dreams, go here