January, 2007
The view from inside
I’m finding it extremely difficult to explain to anyone where I am right now, in my life, in my grief, in my head. One day I am in a calm zen-like space, dishing out ladles of wisdom to friends, gathering books and inspiration around me as I prepare for this next stage; the next day I am crouched over my desk with my hair on fire. There are parts of my make-up that I don’t like. I live with them and they live with me, but it is not a happy partnership. When grieving these parts fade into the background hum of existing – your sole focus is on surviving the blast. As the heat dies down and the acknowledgment (but still not the acceptance) of the loss is painstakingly integrated into your life, your phoenix-self rises out of the ashes and spreads its wings. The world, and your self, has never been more in focus than it is now. This is the point when those musty misshapen parts of yourself, the ones that have kept quiet while you raged and keened, come out to welcome the new day, and you discover they do not fit anymore.
This is where I am. In Jungian terms, I am going through a process called individuation – that’s what my therapist tells me anyway, and reading up on the subject (as I do in any situation) it feels like an accurate assessment. I’d love to be able to report that I’m wafting around by the sea, planning the new colour scheme for my flat-to-be in London, but the truth is, I’m RAGING against my grief, I’m RAGING against my father, I’m RAGING against myself. I’m aching for my love, aching to be touched; I’m beating myself up for my lack of success, and my insidious obsessive inclinations that keep me trapped in the same small shape I have always had when the real me is twice this size. I’m pushing people away from me when I probably most need them, and I’m battening down the doors as I prepare for the next six weeks, weeks that will be filled with too many significant dates, starting with my birthday in five days and ending with the two-year anniversary of his death. Mix in an overactive subconscious providing me with dreams that no one in their right mind would be having, and you have one exhausted woman.
But I’m not running away from any of this. I know that right now I am the strongest, yet most vulnerable, I have ever been. When I’m in the eye of the storm I forget this, but the next day, when the sun is coming back into my world, I see how brave I am to peel back each layer, time and time again, to get to the truth.
I finally admitted to a friend on Sunday that I would like someone in my life. Not that I am in the least bit ready; not that there is room in this technicolored temple of ME for another person’s energy… simply, that one day it would be nice to have a man hold my hand, and for my heart to skip a beat. When he died our relationship didn’t die with him, but I am finding that I can no longer maintain it on my own – this is one long-distance relationship that cannot work.
I have started writing Morning Pages again, I am breathing through each minute to take me to the next, and I am listening to the voices of my characters as they start to talk to me again. Every day old habits and patterns of thinking are broken, allowing space for the new. I mindfully make myself a mug of hazelnut coffee in the cafetiere he bought me that morning in September, exasperated that I only had ‘hippy teabags’ in my house. I am being gentle with myself.
January, 2007
Reflecting
‘In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.’ ~ Virginia Woolf
January, 2007
The magic cottage
My mother and her partner have bought a second home, a 300-year-old cottage in the middle of Wiltshire, and today I visited it for the first time… it is amazing. It’s rather dilapidated at the moment and will require a great deal of work over the next year or so, but walking from tiny room to tiny room i could envisage my children – their grandchildren – running around, up and down the stairs, picking bluebells in the wood that backs onto the enormous garden, and spotting the wild and wandering deer through the kitchen window. I could see us walking to the local (and only) shop to buy Sunday papers; I could see Christmas decorations hanging from the old beams as the scent of roasting lamb clashes with the wood-burning fire. I think it is a magical place, and I believe this is the beginning of a new chapter for our family, one I welcome with open arms.
More pictures here…
January, 2007
Echoes from the past
I don’t know what her name was but I call her Tilly. Tilly came into my life last Saturday in an old photo album with a mock snakeskin cover and heavy black paper pages, all tied up with fraying string. Inside I peeked into the life of a woman I have never met and will never meet. She smiles broadly for the camera alongside her mother, her family, her dogs. Her hair looks like it has spent the morning in curlers; her make-up is perfectly applied. There are no children in this album; perhaps they came years later. I see Tilly at a party smiling, and sitting on the sea front with some chaps who may or may not be her suitors. There is a photograph of a painting that could be either Tilly or her mother, it’s difficult to say. There are pictures of the family on holiday in what looks like Italy – they obviously had a few pennies to spare back then. I’m glad Tilly got to see a bit of the world.
Looking through the pictures, at this intimate peek into Tilly’s life, I wonder how it was that this album of images, so carefully kept for so long, could end up in my hands. Will one day my own photographs be sitting in a junk shop, waiting for a girl with a camera to come along and see them for the treasure they really are?
