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.
Reflecting
‘In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.’ ~ Virginia Woolf
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…
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?
Sand on my soles
The sea question
The sea asks ‘How is your life now?’
It does so obliquely, changing colour.
It is never the same on any two visits.
It is never the same in any particular
Only in generalities: tide and such matters
Wave height and suction, pebbles that rattle.
It doesn’t presume to wear a white coat
But it questions you like a psychologist
As you walk beside it on its long couch.
~ Elizabeth Smither, from The Tudor Style: Poems New & Selected
Reflections
I took myself out on an Artist’s Date yesterday, the first proper one since I’ve been back in this town. I never realised that I was so ravenous for inspiration – twenty-two months of grieving leaves the well so dry, starring at four blank walls all day. I woke up hoping for sunshine, and as the rays broke through the clouds I pulled on my Converse and headed out the door, camera in my bag. I spent a couple of hours in the local museum and art gallery then walked along the sea front, snapping pictures as I went. On any other day it could have been rather depressing as the rain was threatening and the louring clouds were back, but I was looking for something… I was looking for beauty.
To leave the flat has always been an effort, but lately I find myself locking the door behind me before I realise what I’m doing; I’m outside and walking down the street before my mind has had time to complain. I started with nothing when I came here; my life was razed to the ground. With time and tears I rebuilt my skeleton, I rewired my nervous system. Next came flesh, and slowly my skin grew back. My home became filled with objects I treasured; I took my first trip back to London. The words started to return and blogging helped them to grow. Then I took a trip to a new country to meet with women I had never met before, and something changed – the hunger came back. It was as I sat reflecting on my time with those amazing women, looking through the hundreds of photographs I had shot, that a part of me returned, a part that had been dormant for longer than my grief.
Yesterday I had lunch in the museum, and I sat sipping coffee and eating my panini looking out over the sea. I didn’t need a book to fill those moments of alone-ness; I didn’t need company, or a phone call to make me look busy. I sat and I was quiet. Once upon a time, in a life far far away, I wouldn’t have been able to do that: now it is so normal and comfortable for me I want to laugh. Wherever I am I have company: I am with myself. To have this sense of wholeness is such a gift, it’s like spending time with the best company in the world, someone who knows you inside and out, and likes the same things as you.
And so I am left with the hunger: Michelle’s post yesterday brought this word into my mind again. I hunger for my love: that is a fact that has not changed, and may never (I don’t know). But more than this, I hunger for experiences, for photo-opportunities, for kisses, for laughter. I hunger for hot skin and dog-earred pages; for red and yellow, violet and cerulean. I don’t think I’m living with death as much as I used to; I think I’m living with life – scary, hungry, bloody, thrilling LIFE.
Today
Little Miss Sunshine
I wore my yellow coat today. I woke up to grey skies and drizzling rain; outside the people I walked past wore grey coats and grey faces, so I was glad to be a walking beam of sunshine for a while. I’ve been craving colour recently, just as I have been craving new music and tastes, new scenery and scents. My senses are on overdrive, which is interesting considering I’ve been dealing with an old foe with week: Mrs Procrastination. Even coming to this electronic page has been bit of an effort, and I have emails owed to some very treasured friends. The words are slow to come, hiding in the shadows, timidly watching me. A book arrived this morning that I’m hungry to devour, wrapped in a blanket on the sofa. Opening the book to the first page I read this quote by Erica Jong: If a woman wants to be a poet, she must dwell in the house of the tomato. I nodded as I read this, knowing I am on the verge of diving into the whole bloody fruit basket… but first there are things to be done. There are always things to be done… Tomorrow, tomorrow, maybe I will get there tomorrow. Apparently this week was (Inter)National Delurking Week. Is there anyone out there lurking in the shadows with my words? Come join me in the tomatoes!
Date with an angel
I spent a few hours with this beautiful creature today – isn’t she gorgeous? She is a shiatsu practitioner, and a kindred spirit, born on the same day as me (but a few years apart). I was telling her about my blog life, and the way it has become so integral to my world now. Coming out as a blogger can make one feel like a geek, don’t you think? To the uninitiated it might sound like a strange thing to do and it’s very difficult to convey just how great blogging is without a blog in front of you. Luckily Christine is a woman who has travelled through India and other far-flung places in the world and understands all about making connections with people in unusual ways.
