Note to a friend

My lovely, longtime, ocassionally lost to me friend:

You are worth everything.  Every breath you take, every moment, every tear, every struggle, every blackspot, every hesitation, every therapist, every person who ever gave a minute of their time to you.  You are worth every damned thing.  Everything.

This is a terrible, black, horrible, ugly and interminable seeming time.  It may not end, you may not get through it.  I hope against hope that you do, for you, for me, for everyone whose life you have touched.  The world would be the poorer without your sunshine in it.

The reasons we want you to stay are all selfish.  You light up peoples lives when you walk into the room.  You make us laugh, you've made us cry, we've made memories together.  There are so many of us who would dearly love you to continue to weave your story so that we can watch on and sometimes participate.  You are part of our stories, part of our pasts and we want you to go forward and be a part of our future too.

I know that right know you just want the world to stop so that you can get off.  I know that right now you don't want there to be a tomorrow that has you in it.  I know that that feeling might never go away, or it might take a very long time and a lot of hard work to escape from and that now matter how thorough your recover is, this will always leave a scar.

I know too that there are other scars, so many of them.  Time only fades them, it never really takes them away and then as we get older, some of the old injuries start to ache.  Old things come back to haunt us and we look back at time and loves lost and wonder why we wasted so much of what we had and why things didn't work out for us and how come other  people seem to manage to navigate life so bloody successfully.  What the hell happened to us?

I know that no one can take your pain away.  I know that nothing that any one of us can say will make today any better or easier.  You know we would if we could.  It's awful to realise how hard it is for you right now and how much pain you are in.

     ***************************************************************************

A week and more has passed since I started constructing this post.  You are feeling better now, improved indeed by the sounds of things.  I am so glad.  So happy for you that your happy has crept back, at least a little, into your heart.

I will post this, so that I don't lose these thoughts, but I will not draw your attention to it now, as I thought I might when I first started writing.

I will just be quietly joyous for your steps to recovery.

Your friend.

When Someone Else is Depressed

 Well, just when I think the Black Dog has stopped tracking me I find that it has slunk in from another angle. Just a couple of days ago I was loving the sun on my face and silently rejoicing about all that is good in the world and now, over the past couple of days, I have come face to face with the fact that my daughter is not only quite depressed, but also suffers from anxiety.  FML. 

Life loves to throw us a curve ball.  Frankly, I would much rather face going though another deep dark black period myself than have to watch helplessly while someone I love suffers.

I do feel quite helpless.  I get that there is not NOTHING I can do, but I still feel like my ability to change and influence the situation is limited.

What have I done so far?

• Called a naturopath to request an appointment for my daughter - still waiting to hear back at this stage
• Called the local Women's counselling service to find out about locations, pricing, wait lists and areas of expertise - now I have to leave it to my daughter to choose (or not) to make contact with them herself
• Been there, to the best of my ability, although right now I am on my way to work, so I won't be able to ee her until tomorrow 

What else can I do?

• Research, try to gather as much knowledge as I can about what it is I can do to help - so just when I thought I could let this space rest, here I am again! And that's ok, it has to be
• Continue to be there, as much as she wants me to be
• Reach out to her more than I have in the past.  Sometimes when my daughter doesn't come over, or make contact, I think she's just busy with other things, or doesn't feel like spending time with boring old me - turns out sometimes she doesn't come around because she's too depressed!
• I was thinking I might get her a beautiful book to use as a "Gratitude Journal" because everything I know about gratitude projects points to the fact that they are very helpful 
• Let her lead, if she is able, but be ready to step in if it all goes spiralling too far downhill.  I think longer term recoveries work the best if the person in the hotseat does the driving - but I'm no expert at this

Damn!  This is not what I would wish on anyone at all, let alone a beloved child of mine.  I'm so sad that this is where she is at.  I will do everything within my power to find her way back.

I guess the one small blessing is that I know there is a way.  I've been there.

The Lessons we Keep Learning

 Life will give us everything we need.  On a platter.  Pretty much every time.  It is our lesson to learn that this is a gift. Challenging job?  This is a gift.  Struggling financially?  This is a gift.  Health scare?  This is a gift.  How so?  That is our challenge to rise up to and this is where we must dig for and find the gold.  Those crazy storm clouds - they really do all have silver linings.

This was not really ever (this blog) my 'happy place'.  It served as a space of deep and difficult learning - or at least as a reflection of those things.  For the most part I have now moved on from that rocky road and our lives (yes, our lives - we are still here, together, my man and I) are smoother, calmer and happier.

Please note, I did NOT say perfect, or constantly blissful.  This ain't no fairytale baby.  We have our bad days.  We have our ups and downs.  Sure as night follows day, from time to time our darker selves come out to play - or actually, mostly to fight!  But these instance are far fewer and farther between, and less intense when they do occur.  We have definitely made progress! Lots of it.

Why were those terrible times a gift?  What was that silver lining?

Well, I learned a whole lot about myself, about the human mind, about survival and about compassion and acceptance,  I learned to examine and re-examine my values and to sometimes just hunker down and ride out the storm.

I learned to forgive myself my weaknesses and to value my own strengths more. I learned, long and loud - that no matter how much we want the locus of blame or responsibility to be outside of ourselves, it is not.  I learned (again and again) that if I am not happy and don't accept me for me, nobody else can fix that.  I learned that other people's definitions of success and failure were largely both useless and meaningless to me.

I learned that sometimes you can cry too much.  Just as sometimes you can hold it in for too long.

I learned that when all else fails, cooking a warm and nurturing meal and making my home a beautiful space - even when I feel that those simple things are the last thing on my mind and the farthest thing from my reach - can help a whole lot more than expected.  I think this is about "mothering oneself".  

I learned that sunshine and physical activity are absolutely connected to the creation of positive brain chemicals for me - and that if I neglect those things, life tends to go at least a little pear shaped.

I learned that it's ok to show others in your life the soft and sometimes ugly underbelly of your own vulnerability - but that sharing those things is absolutely a choice and not an obligation.

I learned that as so many others before me have found - love conquers many things.

Am I glad that I/we went through all that crap?  Hell no!  I would have liked perfect life, filled with sunshine and ducklings - but it wasn't the way it panned out, and you know what.  That's ok.

I love.  I am loved.  We love.  We are loved.

Sometimes there is no way around but through.

Life on Purpose

I just found this post. I think it's possibly a yer old ... Unposted. For what it's worth, I'm going to post it now.

Well, by and large I think I am well. However, I think that I am drifting. Deep in my heart there is a tiny little fear that drifting might allow me to stray back into the darkness of depression.

I am working full time. We are living in my new house. I see my (small) son for dinner 3 nights a week and he generally stays over from Friday evening until Sunday after dinner. Things with my partner are good, very good even, I would venture to say. We are finally experiencing the love and settled bliss that deep in both our hearts, we knew we could have, but struggled to create.  Life is good.

But where am I going? And how will I know when I get there? I just found this exercise in a blog I sometimes read, called 'The Change Blog', and I thought I might give it a go:

Grab a pencil and paper. Imagine 5 years have passed. All of your dreams have come true. What is a day in your life like? What activities do you do? What people are in your life? What people are no longer in your life? How much money do you make? How do you make money? Where do you live? How do you feel on a daily basis?

In five years from now, I will be 4 months shy of my 50th birthday. Now there's a thought that should hold me into action. My goodness, where have the years gone!

I find it hard to imagine having had all my dreams come true because I barely stop to dream at the moment. However, let's give this a shot!

If all my dreams had come true, that would mean that I have been to Hong Kong, to visit my big son. My brother has 2 healthy and happy young children, my parents are both still alive and well and living on their farm ... I have been on that boat cruise, the big one, and been to Broome, and to Tasmania. My partner stopped work this year or next and had a few wonderful years tidying up loose ends and gaining some new skills, as well as just unwinding after more than 20 years as a public servant.

If all my dreams came true ... I worked on for a few more years and cleared my mortgage, as well as just simply gaining a bit more experience and lots of career satisfaction. Unexpectedly, just in time - a fresh round of redundancy options came through and I got the last boost that I needed to launch me out of the shackling need for full time permanent work.

Our final tidy up of finances left us with a couple of good solid rental properties, no debt, a brilliant camper-van and a little pad in Sydney, to which we can (and will) return whenever we feel like it.

We are travelling now. Free to roam the country at will and financially stable enough to still look forward to a trip overseas once a year or so if we desire. We have thrived at finding work together and some of it has been considerably more lucrative than we expected initially. Additionally, I still take periodic training contracts and we go where the work is. We have had some incredible adventures and made some wonderful friends. The additional free time we have gained by living where we work and not always working had given us time to really focus on our health and fitness. We both glow, and our energy is abundant. We swim in the ocean and walk in the mountains. We have experience Vipashana retreats and volunteered at festivals. We have participated in straw bale house builds and permaculture workshops. We have worked as WWOOFERS and visited remote Indigenous communities. We are both studying part time, not because we need the qualifications but because we enjoy the intellectual stimulation - however, our studies promise to broaden our horizons even more.

We have plenty of money, an abundance of food and everything else that we need. We find welcomes wherever we go and due to our freedom, can respond quickly to friends or family in need. We have house sat and farm minded and done things we didn't ever dream to put on our bucket lists. We enjoy new ideas every day and life is an absolute adventure.

One thing we know, at this stage in our lives, is that one day, perhaps soon, we will fall in love. We will find our "forever home". We aren't forcing the idea, but we are open. Each time we explore a new area, we clarify even further what is, and is not, perfect for us. When we have created perfect clarity, and are completely ready, our home will present itself. We have the financial resources to respond when this happens. We are truly blessed.

We look forwards intensely now, to that next phase in our lives. We are beginning to dream of orchards, poultry, vegetable patches, bees and other settled production. We have gained so many incredible ideas about sustainable and beautiful housing and ecologically sound "homesteading" - it is nearly time for us to create our own small Eden. It will be our turn to be a base, and to fling open our gates, doors and hearts to others.

We will need to have good networks and to develop a sustainable and manageable enough system that others can care for it, because we will always be adventurers and will head off from time to time. There are sights to see, festivals to attend, battles to back up and lessons to learn. Still, it will be good to have our own patch of perfection to return to and grow with. I'm so excited!

That's enough for now, I think. Maybe it's not as specific as it was meant to be - but I like it. That's where i want to be!

I think I'm almost done here

I think it's nearly time for me to put this blog to bed. Apart from dredging out the posts to gather together for my book project, I'm thinking this/that phase of my life is over.

I hope so!

 

Fingers crossed.

 

 

 

Daily Vows

I made a realisation a few days ago that I need to let go of the idea of marriage, for now.  I realised that the reason I feel like I really "need" it is because I am so insecure.  I decided that rather than marriage, what my partner and I need to do is to make a vow to one another, every day.  For that day, and for the future.  One day at a time.  I think for people like me, it's a sensible idea.

We haven't made our vows for today yet.  He (my partner) has gone off on a necessary errand and will probably be back in an hour or so.  I'd like to make sure these vows happen every day, so I'm going to come up with one while he is out.  We have made a couple in writing, in a little 'love book' that I started a while back, but which we hadn't written in for nearly a year and one day we did them by text, because he was away overnight, working on another project.

I've just found a pagan vow that I quite like, and will try to rework until it fits 'us' a bit better.

our miracle lies in the path we have chosen together.  I enter this marriage with you knowing that the true magic of love is not to avoid changes, but to navigate them successfully.  Let us commit to the miracle of making each day work - together.  

So, let me have a fiddle:


My darling lover, at times it feels little short of a miracle that we are still together on this path of our lives.  It is important to me to acknowledge that I am here with you of my own choosing today and all days.  

I begin this day with you understanding that the magic of love is not in avoiding changes, conflict or differences of opinion, but in navigating them successfully.  

Today I commit to making this day of our life (which will not come again) a good one, together with you.  I also commit getting up with that same intention again tomorrow and for all of our tomorrows.


OK, there.  Longer, a bit more fiddly perhaps.  But I like it.

That's for today.  My aim is to find a vow to make to my partner, every day.  To set and reset that intention each and every day, whether we are together physically or not.

To me this is important, it's about speaking to those brain chemicals and to that snivelling and un-confident younger self and saying WE ARE HERE, TOGETHER.  He is here, LOOK.  We are committed to this.  Shut up and enjoy yourselves and STOP trying to sabotage the whole damn thing.

When I feel good and I am OK within myself I know that this partnership is incredibly important to me and supports me in ways that reach further than I can grasp.  My partner offers physical and mental support, spiritual and emotional support and more than anything - he offers me companionship.  He is my fellow adventurer.  Yes, he throws up all sorts of challenges and difficulties - but for those reasons also, I believe we are meant to be together.  TO LEARN AND TO GROW together.

Blessed Be.

Procrastination and Avoidance

I'm an expert at both avoidance and procrastination.  I can always find away to put off something that should be done today until some undefined time in the future when 'I have time for it' and I can generally find a way to be pretty much anywhere but home if home has gotten out of hand and become messy, dirty or smelly.  It's a bit of a hassle on the smelly thing because the carpets in the house really do smell bad, a lot of the time.  No amount of vacuuming, deodorising or steam cleaning with our domestic wet/dry vac seems to make any difference to that bad/fusty smell.  Of course some days are worse than others for the smell and when it's damp and cold so the house gets all closed up and circulation is low, it's the worst.  The more the carpet smells, the more I avoid the house.  I've tried incense, natural spays, bicarb soda, eucalyptus oil - pretty much everything I can think of that won't make me sick or give me headaches.  I can't seem to win with that carpet.

At the moment, it's imperative that I cease avoiding what needs to be done and stop procrastinating about sorting, tidying, purging and packing.  We are moving in not too very long and basically, I haven't done a damned thing about it.  I really need to.  I have a bit of leave and so therefore a window of opportunity.  Yet here I am, sitting downstairs in the car, because the light is brighter and it smells better and is not as messy.  I must stop this and just begin, wherever I begin.  I wish I didn't feel so powerless about all my partners seemingly endless amounts of stuff.  We did have a bit of a talk about this a while back.  I think he threw maybe one or two tiny items away and boxed up another batch which have been ignored on the dining room floor for a week now.  We don't miss them, of course, because they are not things we ever use and if we move them with us, if we never open the box, we'll be none the wiser.

Argh!!!  I don't WANT to be surrounded by dead weights.  I don't want to have anchors hanging everywhere.  I want my life (and my home) to be filled only with useful, beautiful, meaningful items that deeply reflect the core of who I am.

That sentence is so important, I think, that I'm going to say it again:

I want my life, and my home, to be filled with only with items that are useful, beautiful and/or meaningful items that deeply reflect the core of who I am.

I don't want extraneous clutter tripping me over, weighing me down and obscuring my view of how things really could be.  I'd rather have too little of perfection than too much of meaningless jumble.

I know that some of these things are meaningful and important to my partner.  I know he likes to hoard and hold.  I don't think those things serve any true purpose, unless we actually utilise them and incorporate them into our lives.  The fact that you keep a cut glass vase doesn't bring back a loved relative that has passed over and the fact (in my opinion) that you keep the bloody thing shoved on a high shelf gathering dust behind dozens of other hoarded items doesn't actually serve their memory in any positive way.  What does it say about how you felt about that person?  I'm happy to shove you on a shelf and allow you to gather dust.  I'll get you out once every few years when I move house and shove you in a box until we get to the new location, where I will shelve you and promptly forget about you again.  How does that work as the keeper of a properly treasured memory?

I struggle with these things, I really do.

I looked up a 'ten best shortcuts to get a house ready for a move' and NUMBER ONE was

Purge, eliminate…whatever you want to call it, just get rid of stuff you don’t need.

Yep, I'd love to.  I've spent years, literally years, throwing away and reducing my own possessions in order to make room for the possessions of various partners.  Quite frankly, I'm just a little bit tired of it, still yet - I think I am going to have to do it all over again.  

After my last relationship breakup, I really was down to the barest of bones (I thought) of who I am, but now I am going to need to let go of the last of my scrapbooking tools and equipment, the last of the last of the last of my books, and really, I don't know what else.  I don't have much.  I cannot and will not let go of my photo albums.  Pretty much all of the music I own these days is on my phone, there's a handful of CD's bought from live events in the past few years, that's all.  All other physical music I parted company with long since.  Yes, I need to trim down my clothing again.  That's an ongoing thing and I'm happy to do that.  Always.

For the life of me, I just down know what else in the house is mine to deal with.  Almost nothing.  It makes me feel very tied, very powerless, very frustrated.

I know I've gone on about this in another post, previously - but I still haven't found a solution for it.  I tried working with my partner, to look at things and to get some sorting done.  It was so horribly tense and he became so terribly defensive about all of his things, item by item, that I felt I couldn't tackle it again, I felt like it was going to blow up into some awful argument.  What I need him to understand (but can't quite seem to convey) is that I am not trying to take away who he is, or his past, I am simply trying to make room for us, as a couple, to have a fantastic present and future.

I'm stuck.  I'm stuck weighed down by stuff that is not mine to either purge or eliminate.  I don't know how to get rid of it or to explain to my partner that not only do we not NEED that stuff, it actually has negative effects, at least on me.  In fact, the NEED is to lighten the load, it's suffocating me.

The step two suggestion is:

Have a garage sale.

Again - the stuff is not really mine to sell and I think I've pretty much let go of everything of any value that may have been sale-able.  I truly feel that I have almost nothing.  It's probably not entirely true and I guess once we have moved everything we need to the new house, we still have this one in our possession and we'll have an opportunity to go through what has been left behind (which will include a couple of washing machines and a very large table, I suspect) perhaps having a garage sale here might be a good idea.  Not for the money, just so that the stuff gets recycled and goes off to be useful to someone.

I've got to get through step one, and the move, before I can get to that though.

Step three?

Organize the stuff you keep.

OK - yep.  That's fair, and makes sense .... and again, the less there is, the easier to get organised.

Right, there's not much that I feel in control of, but I'd better go start purging the stuff that I feel I have a right to (my clothes, my son's cloths, my scrapbooking gear, bathroom odds and ends).  

The rest will have to wait, I guess and I will have to get brave and tackle those hard conversations again.