Peace

The contrast couldn't be starker. From Rage to Peace in one easy step, right? Nope, wrong. It has taken many, many little babysteps, tiny tiptoes through the morass of despair, anger, irritability, upset and fear. But here I am all the same. Here after a Mothering Sunday spent without the Minis, yet somehow more at peace than I have felt for a long time, and I think I know why.

The answer lies outside. In the wind, the sunshine, the hail showers, the newborn lambs, the nutty rampaging dog and striding out along the ridge with nothing to do but try and capture it on camera.

So here it is, my poor attempt to show you what today gave me:

Then there was this: Spring Stream - Audio

PEACE OUT

Rage

I apologise.

Unreservedly and totally I apologise for the ranting and the internal screaming and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth which has been occurring over the last few weeks. It's rather like a low level breakdown which is going on in the background of everything else. Not demanding attention, not creating a fuss, just ongoing and exhausting. Today I even had to leave Twitter alone for a bit so that I didn't drive everyone away with my impotent rage.

I'm raging at everything at the moment, life, inequality, female rights being eroded worldwide, Minis refusing to get ready for school on time, the grey and miserable weather, our relative poverty, the chance of me finding a decent job without moving house again, my horridly unhelpful stomach giving me constant pain and nausea, other people. 

Yes, other people. They've really been getting up my nose recently. Other people with their needs and emotions and offers of help and kindness and opinions. Oh, the endless bloody OPINIONS. 

(You can probably tell by the SHOUTY CAPITALS that I'm still feeling the anger bubbling just beneath the surface. I'm trying to contain it, but it keeps seeping out.)

I don't really know why I'm so angry, except that I haven't eaten properly for ages (coming into my 6th week now), I can't seem to get enough sleep, I have no energy, my job is physically demanding and financially not remunerative enough to counter the waves of dread which overcome me whenever I consider my bank balance. Are those good enough reasons to be raging? I don't know. I don't normally feel like this. It's alien to me.

There are other symptoms too; an utter lack of sex drive, interest in others or ability to follow the plotline of any book or film. In fact concentrating on anything is bloody hard at the moment and I appear to lack the desire to do so anyway. 

I am raging at the rage, impotently shouting into the great buffeting wind of life as it races over and around me, utterly impervious to my attempts to make it stop and consider my pain and anger. It doesn't care. That's a hard lesson to learn. That even when you feel that you are being broken into a thousand tiny matchsticks as a wooden house in the force of a tornado, life doesn't care. It doesn't even notice. I think that's when we know we're really grown up. When we can access and appreciate the uncaring, unloving universe and understand that it is intrinsically neither good nor evil, it has no weighted value system as we humans do. It cares not for my ability to pay my mortgage, get up in the mornings, care for my children, feed myself or any other petty and mundane normal lifelong chores to which we are all subject.

Still there is no answer. I shout into the distance and the trees and hills echo back to me the sound of my own pointless rage. I think at this point I need to stop. I must accept things for what and how they are. I must try harder to conquer my generally high level of irritability and see the beauty in the people and the world around me. 

I don't want to. I want to shout and stamp my feet and scream and scream till I'm sick. 

What price maturity??

Guest Post - When Death Is So Tempting

When Death Is So Tempting.

Too many people in this world feel like the snow is talking to them; they listen to it, and, death is the result.  As a homeless girl trespasses through the frozen forest “I’m right behind you” whispered a voice heavy with age.  The icicles in the haunted wood shattered like glass as the creeping trees reached out with bone white fingers.  Her hair was brown with a hint of white from the melting snow, in every snowstorm there is only pain.  The deep snow on the worn out grass seemed like a welcoming duvet beside a glowing fire.  The snowflakes felt almost warm on her flaky skin.  “Lie down” the voice whispered.  Her heart told her to keep going, but her head disagreed.  She finally fell and the night whispered “Don’t listen to your head”. Now only friendship could save her.  Somewhere, in the blistering town, one girl named Lucy, with a life of secrets, walked into the deadly wood.

As Lucy ventured deeper and deeper into the wood, her eyes began to water.  She wept “Where am I?”  Suddenly, in the corner of her eye she could just see the head of a blank body.  “Help me” the body whispered.  “What is your name?” Lucy asked as she shivered.  “I have no name, I am homeless” Lucy helped this stranger up, and warmed her in her coat.  But suddenly the wind blew and the snowflakes began to fall again.  They both fell deep into the blanket of snow, and there they lay, for hundreds of years to come.  Their graves were accompanied by ice blocks and every summer, when the ice melted, their spirits were released.  Still to this day, they roam the forest floor, hoping for somebody help them find peace.

                                                                                                       

Reconstruction

I've neglected my blog lately. Real Life has jumped in with all sorts of unwelcome events and made it very difficult to make my mind work in any focused direction. 

There has been a tragic and sudden death, an emotionally illiterate (now ex) boyfriend, a fruitless job search and a debilitating illness which won't go away.

However, I've decided that I can't keep wallowing. It is time to get back up and get on. Time to reconstruct my life and head in a direction of my choosing, rather than letting other people make the choices for me. For too long I have reacted to other people's needs, and not considered that the best way to make others happy is to make yourself happy too. 

Spring is springing. I have daffodils in my kitchen, washing hanging on the line, chooks laying and windows open. It is March 2012. If the Mayans were correct, I may only have a few months left to do everything I want to do with my life. If they were wrong, I can't regret making the most out of this year. 

So I'm lifting my chin, taking my happy pills, getting some earlier nights and refusing to believe that this is all there is out there for me.

Wish me luck chaps - and if you hear of a fabulous job you think I'd be great for, tell me please!

Learning

Today I have been learning stuff. Lots of stuff. Good stuff, bad stuff and indeterminate stuff.

I learnt that not only is Chthonic a word, it means "related to or concerning the underworld" It's got a Wikipedia entry and everything. And thanks to me Firstborn will be acing her spelling test this week with the sentence: "The mole is a chthonic animal." Oh yes. (Possibly not entirely correct but we USED it good!)

I have learnt that although the bank might say it will accept a birth certificate and any other form of address and personal ID, what they actually mean is 3 from this list: Passport (wrong name), decree absolute, marriage cert (say wut?), birth cert or driving licence (err wrong name again). I'll be going back for the fourth time tomorrow. Naturally very happily.

I have also learnt that I am indeed the world's worst judge of character. Last week F paid me a wondrous compliment when she said that she loved that "When you say "Yes" you mean yes, and when you say "No" you mean absolutely not!". It seems I am alone in this. The lovely CS who has been making me smile much and feel hopeful over the last few weeks, has been harbouring dark thoughts. It seems my close relationships with friends make him feel insecure and unlovely. And there was me thinking all was straight forward, easy going and very well! Like I said - not the best judge of character.

It made me reflect on the dark side of change. Change means hope, but change also means stepping into the unknown. That can sometimes be very scary. Stepping out into the vast, empty wastelands of the potential future can make you feel like Marco Polo on an epic expedition, or it can make you feel as if you've lost your bearings and don't know where the floor is anymore.

I feel like the latter just now. The idea that someone would be able to pretend for over 24 hours that all is well while feeling utterly wretched is totally alien to me. Some might say that I am prone to verbal diarrhea. I prefer to think that I am an open book, I let everyone know where they stand. Clear boundaries, clearly marked. Not inflexible but well defined.

I don't understand what I'm learning in all this - I just know that I am learning hard things today. Tough stuff. I hope that what I learn will change me for the better and that I won't throw everything new away out of fear.

Wish me luck.

Change

A small word which communicates such a lot, both emotionally and practically. 

I decided before the end of last year that 2012 was going to be a different year. Things were going to change. I opened myself up to it, to the idea that keeping things on the same, steady, even keel that they've been on for a while now might not be the only way. That by allowing change into our lives I might find a new path, perhaps even a better way. 

Grandpa dying before Christmas felt less like an ending than a beginning. It felt as if the movement which I had deliberately invited into my life for the new year was already beginning. The shifting of boundaries and static elements in my life was appearing in front of me.

I proactively have sought out some changes. Applying for new jobs, courses and volunteer positions has instantly enabled me to change my views on what is going to be possible careerwise in the future. I have allowed the possibility of romantic love back into my heart. Almost immediately people have come forwards in different areas of my life which has already changed it for the better.

I feel hopeful, fresh, new, almost reborn. When I see the buds of spring, the daffodils and crocii which are out unseasonably early, I feel that they are illustrating the promise I'm anticipating for my/our future. This might sound like some hippydippy shit, but it is changing my view of the past, present and future for me and my family. 

It feels good.

Sometimes a change is as good as a rest. Allegedly.

Remembering Beloved.......

I haven't written anything for a while. It's been Christmas, and New Year and holidays and busy, but also there has been sadness. Grandpa, the most complex person in my family, died suddenly on the 18th of December. He was 93. He had had a chest infection, but he was not ill, or very weak, and so it was a shock to us when during the afternoon, he simply coughed and died.

It was a quiet ending, full of roast beef and whisky and contentment. The last six months without Grandma had been very peaceful for him. He read books for the first time in his life, became much gentler, and finally, on the morning of the day he died told Pa that he loved him.

How wonderful.

What a fantastic ending. If you have to go, what a kindly way to be taken.

We miss him. Particularly because he had begun to be such a lovely man again. Lucky us to have had that time.

Sad to see you go Grandpa. Sweet dreams.