Absent

Literally. WordPress keeps eating my posts.

Oh, December. Where did you come from?

So, I’ve been a bit hiding lately.  I couple weeks ago I was wondering why I was so tired.  And then I realised.  Almost December.

I mean, December is wearying enough.  But this year is pretty low key, so why was I stressed?  Oh, that’s right.  It’s Trauma Month.

I forget that I have to be careful of myself.  I’ve been thinking about it, and I have decided that it really is like spoons.  I hesitate to say that, because I am abled and I don’t wish to appropriate language that is helpful to people who need it.  Oh, look, poor me I’m a bit tired and it’s hard!  And it is, in fact, incredibly different.  It isn’t physical tiredness, and so it’s therefore easier to deal with, by far.  I’m not going to be unable to feed or clothe myself because I am too tired.  I may lack the WILL to do those things, on certain days. But that is completely, utterly different from being actually unable to do them. 

It’s emotional tiredness, attention tiredness.  Anything I have to pay attention to or think about emotionally uses up a few more spoons.  And I just don’t have them to spare at the moment.  It’s not that I don’t WANT to spare them, it’s that they are not there.  And I hate it, because it makes me feel weak and vulnerable and like a big fat wuss.  But it’s true, that’s the way it is, and pretending to be fine is completely counter productive.

This week I’ve been migrainey, plus I saw my mother last weekend and am seeing her again on Saturday.  Plus it’s the work christmas thing.  Plus I got two unexpected bulls.  Plus, plus, plus.  Nothing major, really.  Things that in any other month would be irritating but nothing a good whinge couldn’t fix.  But it’s December and I’m TIRED.  I just keep coming back to how weary and drained I am.  I just want to lay down in bed and stare at the ceiling until January.  My temper is short and I am having a hard time making meaningless chit chat with workmates and others without being rude.  I’m sleeping badly and waking up tired and achey.

I didn’t start this meaning to have a whinge.  I meant to simply say, you probably won’t see me around these parts for a while.  Things are fine, but I have to keep reminding myself that they are fine as long as I watch myself and am careful of where my energy is going.  

In a lot of ways, it’s a reminder of how good I actually have it.  At how much grief and pain and that sucking, aching nothingness have receded.  They still are always there, when I’m tired and stressed and upset.  But I am in charge now.  That feels good.  And I want to keep it that way, thankyouverymuch.

So I am opting out until I feel less tired, because unfortunately I am paid to put my attention elsewhere.  Please don’t think this is an appeal for sympathy or a cry for anything.  I really truly am totally fine.  I reserve the right not to be fine, later, but that would be ok too.

I am still reading everyone’s blogs but am too lazy to comment.  I hope all of your holidays go fantabulously, and I shall see you all again soon.

Dammit

I was chatting to a friend and to demonstrate a point which I can’t remember anymore I showed her this.

It’s Sweet Honey in the Rock singing verses from Khalil Gibran’s ‘The Prophet’.  Those two things have a whole bunch of associations for me, but the base line is, I love this song a whole, whole lot for so many reasons.

Anyway, later in the day I was thinking about it as regards me and my own mother, and whether it’s still relevant (conclusion: yes).  And I had a moment where I just intensely missed my dad.  The first one without grief all tied in.  The kind of missing you might do if someone were overseas, or you just hadn’t had a chance to catch up for a while.

And then of course I was even sadder afterwards.  Because I am sort of used, now, to the emotion of missing my dad with anger and grief mixed in, or for feeling bad for missing my dad because he made dealing with my mother easier, or any of those things.  But I am not used to missing my dad in a way that makes me think ‘I should call him’.

Clearly, I cannot call him.

And I am angry that, because of the way he chose to leave us, and because of my mother, it has taken me TWO YEARS to be able to just miss him.  To just want to hear his voice and share a joke with him, without any other emotional meaning behind that impulse.

There we go.  Anger AND grief.  That’s more familiar…

‘You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.’ – George Bernard Shaw

On the Tuesday after craft camp, it was obvious that I was actually ILL, not just sniffly.  My throat was sore, my ears were sore, I felt like someone had been using me as a punching bag, I was all stiff and achey and poorme.  The last two hours of work were a trial worthy of hercules.  As I left work, my sister rang me, squealling that the cat had caught a baby mouse and was playing with it, and she (the sister) had to go to work, so if the mouse was not dead by the time she left, I would have to deal with it.

Luckily, the cat appeared to have consumed it by the time I got home.

I put myself to bed at 8.30 that night, anticipating a restless night. I always sleep badly when I’m sick.  And I always have horrible epic dreams in which I have to endlessly search for things or perform repetative tasks.

Surprisingly, I slept pretty well up to about 3.30am, when I woke up and then dropped back off at about 5.30, just in time to be very surprised that my alarm was going off.

I did have lots of vivid dreams, though.  They were almost exclusively about craft camp, and were quite wonderful.  What a lovely bunch of women to spend time with, even in my subconscious. 

I did have one nasty dream, though.  About my mother, of course.  They always are.  I don’t really remember much about the dream.  It was set at the parental home, but although my father was dead in the dream we were younger – I was a teenager and my sister young, although she didn’t feature in it except inasmuch as I felt the need to take flak to shield her from my mother, as was usual.  I had to perform some dream task – looking for something, maybe – and my mother either wanted me to do something else, or wanted me to do it in a particular way that I knew wouldn’t work.  But she wouldn’t listen to the reasons for why I had to do whatever it was my own way.  She was just talking over the top of me, being quite rude about my general capabilities and grasp on reality, until she found some way to force me to do it her way.

It was a pretty unremarkable dream, really.  Except that when I woke up I still felt all the emotions – that soul deep frustration and anguish and powerlessness and lack of agency.  That terrible loneliness of being caught under someone else’s power and not even allowed to acknowledge that.  The anger at having one’s will not even heard, simply squashed, for arbitrary reasons.

It was nice, in a way.  It was good to remember the way I used to feel, all the time.  That these were genuine emotions, caused by real things that my mother did, not just teenage tantrums.  That I am in a better place now, thanks to hard work on myself and also limiting the amount my mother features in my life.  Phew!  I will be remembering those dream emotions the next time my mother tries to emotionally blackmail me or guilt me about something.  Those emotions, remembered in my dream, are why I have no positive emotions about her now. 

Tangentally, I realised that although I grew up calling my parents by their first names, I hardly ever do anymore.  They usually feature as ‘my mother’ and ‘my dad’.  Mostly because very few of the people who are important in my life actually know/knew my parents.  But also, I think, because it’s easier to refer to my mother as such, when she refuses to treat me like a fellow human being.  It’s easier to give her a label and a niche and file her away as a symbol, because that is all (all! ha!) she really is.  The same goes for my dad, for a whole barrel of different reasons, obviously.  I don’t really miss having a dad, I must say.  I miss Tim, though.  On the other hand, I don’t miss Theresa, but I sometimes miss having a ‘proper’ mother – whatever that means.  A mother who it is safe to allow access to my life, I guess. 

Oh, well.  I feel remarkably little angst about it at the moment, but I suspect that that is a result of the new-relationship brain drugs and also the fact that I haven’t had to have much to do with my mother lately.  Oh, and having blogged out some angst, and figured out some connections.  The angst will be back, I’m sure.  I’ll keep you posted on that, shall I?

Milestones

Well, that’s christmas over.

I mostly ignored it, to be honest.  Which might be why the day itself was quite enjoyable.  It felt like my christmas in China did – not a day like any other, but not really like christmas, either.  I squirreled out of spending christmas eve at my mother’s house, which I always find extremely depressing.  Instead, she came down for brunch and present exchanges, and then the three of us (mother, sister, me) went to the family christmas lunch.  Which was only moderately painful, and my uncle narrowly avoided being racist, although he would keep skimming the surface.  My cousin’s new boyfriend was there (his idea, and I bet she resisted it strongly, being the best example of our family’s commitment phobia) and he was lovely. I stayed a couple of hours and then when it started to degenerate (naming no particular aunts), I went to Emma’s house for dinner and drinks and good people whose company I enjoy without any cringing at all.  Such a relief.

The weekend before this one was a bit tricky.  The Friday was my dad’s birthday, the Saturday was the day he killed himself, and the Monday was my birthday - and also the day he was found.

I had several christmas and birthday events on that weekend and in the end I only went to one, despite harrasment from one of the organisers of the three work events.  My birthday I spent mostly at home – I had the day off, thank god – and shopping with my sister.  I was a bit fragile, but I knew I would be.  So I wrapped myself in the bubble wrap of soothing activities, and put myself up on a high shelf where no one could accidently knock my emotional equilibrium over.  I will admit to a few crying jags, but they felt more like something that needed to be got out the way.  Something to bouy me up out of sadness, not being dragged down into it.  All in all, it was a smoother ride than I expected.

I did miss christmas – it’s a season that I love, despite all it’s problems.  I love the excitement and the fun and the feeling that this is a special time, a time to think and reflect and to consider others before yourself, to put extra thought into the things that make a life more than just getting up and going to work.  My year in China taught me to love it even more, and to choose the things about it that bring me joy and leave the other parts to one side. 

But every time I would hear a carol or see an ad and get a bit wistful, I would think ‘next year’.  This time next year, I hope to be alone in my own house, free to have the bits of christmas I like, and not some of the others (although they will sneak in).  And it won’t be quite as emotionally loaded.  I hope.

These photos are all taken from the spot on my couch where I usually sit to knit or embroider.  At a certain time of day the sun comes blazing in and the whole room is lit up in the most glorious manner.  If I sit here on the couch long enough, the light hits my project and lights it up.

I spent ages playing around with the settings on my point and shoot camera to try and capture something of what it actually feels like to sit there, bathed in the dappled sun.  When I think of the houses I’ve lived in, what I remember most clearly about all of them was the light.  And I always remember them at whatever time of day it was that the light was the best there. 

It makes it hard to see what you’re doing, but luckily this blanket didn’t need much seeing.  It’s Brooklyn Tweed’s tweed baby blanket (rav link).  I ordered the yarn (rainbow wool, and it’s lovely) for it before Emma was even pregnant, and started knitting it before he published the pattern – while it was still guidelines.  Luckily, I had the right needle size, gauge, and I had hit almost the exact right number of stitches for the halfway point when he published the pattern.

I bought the pattern because I was a bit intimidated by the icord edging (NO idea why, now that I think about it) and didn’t really want to do the calculations for the feather and fan edging.  Have I mentioned here that I highly dislike feather and fan?  The less time spent thinking about it the better, in my book…

I do have photos of it finished, in which you can see what it actually is, but I haven’t gotten around to uploading them yet, so you’ll just have to wait.  Here’s the rav link to my version, anyhow.

Lastly, I would just to say a heartfelt ‘thankyou’ to all of you.  To those I know, or know better, because of this blog.  To people I’ve met and haven’t met, to those of you who’ve been reading all through this tough year and before, and to those I’ve just met and connected with recently.  You make my world brighter, richer and happier, and I am so glad and grateful to have you all.  I am constantly amazed by how real, solid and truly helpful the community that I have found, through my blogs and yours, is.  What a wonderful group of women we are!

I hope this time of year was as joyful as it could possibly be for you all, wherever that fits on the scale.  And if I don’t speak to you again before then, here’s to a fantastic new year!  Bring on 2010!

Cheating

I started writing this as an email response to Janet’s comment on my post.  And it got really long and I thought that it’s something I’d want to blog about eventually, so here it is.

After I went to bed last night I was thinking about it some more.  I think I feel so frustrated because, for example, I get upset one day because I find something that reminds me of my dad (the serial code inside a computer game, the writing inside a christmas present book, something to do with astronomy).  So I get upset, and I process it and maybe I blog, and I feel heaps better.  Then the next week, the same thing happens.  Because of the way I’m built (I have a Meyers Briggs test to prove it!  But I didn’t need it to tell me…) I really hate going over the little stuff all the time.  I get frustrated.  So I just stop doing it. 

But it’s not the same thing coming back.  It’s a new thing, even though it looks the same.  So then it all backs up and it’s like a cupboard full of old broken things and after a while I don’t even want to open the door because it’s all going to fall on my head.

 

So, yes.  Like Janet said.  Movement is good.  Movement makes it feel like something that I’m doing, not something that is happening to me.  It makes it feel like something that has, if not an end, then at least a purpose.  And essentially the blog is for me, not for you guys, although you’re an awesome bonus.  So I will write what I damn well want. 

The thing is, I don’t want to write about it because I think essentially I want to be done now.  Which, when I think about it with my actual brain is ridiculous.  It’s not even been a year!  But I’m tired.  And we’ve hit the bit now where people sort of assume I’m over it, fixed, ok again.  I am pretty sure I am never going to be ok again.  That’s just not on the cards.

 

That said, I am also totally ok.  I know that I’m doing ok, and really, most days are frustrating but fine.  But I just feel a bit like if I put something out there that isn’t fine, people won’t have a context to put it into.  Which is silly because my blog readers/commenters have consistently proved to be the people with the best context.  You are people who know about grief, about life, about how easy things can be hard from the inside sometimes.  And I know that when you blog about the hard bits of life, even if that’s all you blog about for a while, I don’t hear it as whining or complaining or being gloomy.  That’s what life is like sometimes and it makes me want to hear from you more because that way I know when you say something is good, today was good, you mean it.

I had a long talk with my oldest friend last night, who also works with me.  She had a modified version of the ‘I’m worried about you’ talk.  (I really hate that – then I feel bad because obviously I wasn’t doing a good enough job pretending to be normal and now other people are put out!  Oh no!  I failed as a human being!  Which, again: stupid, but tell my social conditioning that.)  We both agreed that something has to change.  I feel like my workplace – specifically a few of the people and the general culture – is draining my life force.  Which is upsetting because I love it there, and while I’m not crazy about all the people, I love the culture.  But I just don’t have the energy, and there’s not really a ‘turn up, do your job, go home’ option.  Everything is about being involved and part of the community.  Which is lovely.  Except then my community requires me to listen to long speils on social justice and then gives me typing to do about suicide prevention.  It isn’t feeling very supportive.  And since the pay is… not great, and a bunch of the awesome people have left recently, it doesn’t feel like there’s that much to stick around for.

I had a job interview a week ago for an admin job in one of our unis.  I was apprehensive about even going because I’m not keen to be in admin forever.  Then again, there’s nothing else I specifically want to do so… why not?  Anyway, it turned out to be a really good situation (more money too), but on the next Monday I sent them an email to ask them to take me out of the running because there’s an internal job that is not admin that I have applied for.  The person whose job it is is super keen and talking to me like I already have it, but she’s not the one making the decision.  Also I think she just kind of wants not to feel guilty about it.  At the time I was all excited about it, although there won’t even be a shortlist for it until next week, but now I’m not sure.  How much would change?  Would the things that are making me want to crawl under my desk and yell at everyone to go away change?  Or just shift to the new job? 

I’m pretty sure a change, any change, even the weather getting nicer, will help.  Currently in my job I am both bored and irritated.  So being engaged and irritated might be a step up.  And maybe I wouldn’t be irritated.  Who knows!  All I know is, after last week, I wish I hadn’t sent that email.  I wish I was starting a new job soon.  I wish I was working in that nice clean office on the eighth floor of a building right in the city with new people whose hangups and foibles I don’t know yet, who presumably manage to unjam the photocopier by themselves most of the time.  I don’t regret it much, but I regret it.  Enough to be considering sending the contact person an email saying ‘I changed my mind again!’ even though I’m almost positive they’ve already hired someone.  That would be silly, right?

Lying fallow

I’ve been doing that thing again where I try and ignore the fact that life is happening, because I feel like I’m scrambling to keep up.  Or maybe it’s that thing where I need some down time, a quiet space, to deal with things.  Only I’m not, really, I’m ignoring them.  I’m not sure which thing I was doing, to tell you the truth, but I know it meant not blogging.

Part of it is because, once I haven’t blogged for a week or two, usually that’s enough time for something to come up about my dad, or my mum, or how my life is more complicated than I’d like it, or whatever.  And often I don’t want to blog about that.  Partly because I’m often avoiding thinking about the issue, because it’s hard and painful, partly because this is not a grief blog and I don’t want it to be, but mostly, I think, because it’s too hard to frame it.  I want to say ‘this is how I’m feeling: shit’ without it sounding like ‘and everything is always shit and will always be shit’ because that is absolutely not what I mean.  Or sounding too self indulgent or always glum – isn’t it funny how much we self edit?  ‘Oh, I mustn’t say this patently true thing, because then people will think I’m a whiner’.

But, of course, ignoring things doesn’t help.  And in fact, ignoring the fact that I’m sad just makes me sadder, because then I have to expend more energy building walls around it and pretending to be normal.  I remember Janet and then Suse telling me that everyone needs a surplus, and it’s important not to push yourself if you don’t have one.  Well, I’m on the bones of my emotional bum at the moment, folks.  And, because I am a REALLY SLOW LEARNER OMG WE JUST DID THIS ALREADY I keep forgetting that.  I keep thinking ‘oh, I feel fine today, in fact, I feel perfectly happy!  That must mean I can go out and see all the friends I haven’t seen for a month!  All of them!’ and then having a little mini-crash.  Because any large amount of emotion – even good ones – are a bit much right now.  So I’ve been out of contact more than I’d like, not visiting, not catching up for coffee, not blogging.  Beacause being normal is too hard.  I’m angry about that and I don’t want to admit it, but it’s true.

The latest post over at Fugitivus made me realise this.  It’s not that I don’t know how to act like everything is ok.  It’s not that everything isn’t ok – in general, it is.  I’m fine.  And even when I’m not fine, I know I will be again, soon.  It’s spring and the sun is shining and I’ve planted a garden and ok, work is mental and I’m conflicted about my future in this job or another and I don’t know what decisions to make, but in general, life is pretty ok!  But some days it isn’t, and that’s ok too. 

Some days I feel like I’m too broken, I’m traumatised and tired and that everything that has happened, and is happening, is a big lump inside of me that I’m dragging around and just being a normal human being is hard enough.  Just turning up to work and making small talk is enough.  Especially where I work where suicide-mental-health-trauma-how-are-you-feeling-let-me-touch-you-reassuringly-now-lets-talk-about-social-ustice are lurking around every corner.  Which is also fine.  Except when it’s not.

I feel the need to make another qualifier about how I’m fine and everything is fine and look at the sunshine!  But you’re all intelligent people, so I’ll just say: take that as a given.  That is the background to this.  This post, and any like it, is a focus on an event and not the larger picture.  I am not going to say that again.

Because I think that’s one of the big things that’s stopping me from blogging.  The same way I am starting to self edit in real life conversations.  I will start to say something completely innocuous about my dad – something that happened when I was a kid, for example – and then I will stop myself, and not say it.  Because whenever I do, there’s this little silence, this space in the conversation, where people try to work out how to respond.

And that makes me so angry!  I don’t want to edit him out of my life.  Ok, some days I do – this week I’m angry at him again.  But it makes me mad that everything is so weighted.  It makes it harder to work out what, as Harriet put it in her post, is ‘right’.  So I avoid people more than I’d like, even people I like.  Because I always feel like I have to be on my gaurd.

But then I was reading the Fugitivis post, and also Janet’s post, and I was leaving these long comments.  And I thought ‘you know what?  You have your OWN blog.’  I forget how helpful blogging is.  Part of that is, when I’m in hiding mode, blogging is the opposite of what I want to do.  I want to find a warm, quiet, safe space to curl up in a ball in and pretend like everything’s ok.  And that’s fine, for a while.  But you can’t stay there.  You can have an evening where you have a bath and read a romance or you watch a movie or just lie in bed.  But then you have to get up and go to work and talk to people and be a human being.  And if you stay in the headspace of the safe-warm place, where you don’t articulate the things that are upsetting you, you end up tying yourself in knots.  And then you bring that back to your safe hidey hole and that place isn’t comforting anymore.  Ok, everyone needs down time – sometimes I am just so tired of feeling broken and on the edge of my emotional seat (lots of derriers and emotions today, not sure what those metaphors are about!) that I have to go hide just to have a rest.  But it’s not helpful or constructive and it doesn’t make anything better for more than a couple hours.

Because I need to articulate the things that upset me.  Because that makes them less of a big deal.  I think I’ve been avoiding doing it because to do it with an audience makes it feel like a big deal.  Makes them feel important and big and A Thing that is Happening.  Which, inasmuch as they are part of human experience, they are.  But I think I need to pin them to the page (or screen) to give them their place and their moment, and then leave them behind.  Because dragging all this crap with me is exhausting.

I wonder what ratio of my blog posts are ‘I’m back and I’ll be blogging regularly again’ posts?

More of the same

I haven’t had much to say, lately.  I am generally fine, the days go by and I feel a bit discontent, cranky at being tired and sick all the time, still, over being cold.  But when I stop and consider what I would write, it all seems so blah, more whinging when actually, I feel lucky to be where I am in my life.  Or else it’s been a bad day, and I really really don’t want to open that floodgate.

Does it look cold?  That’s cos it WAS!

I realised mid last week that it was six months Since.  I also realised, that I never, in my head, say Since what, exactly.  Because it isn’t exact.  It’s Since whatever is bothering me that week.

Since my father chose not to be a part of our lives.

Since things got harder with my mother.

Since we had to move.

Since some good things, too – that time, you know?  The feel of it is what is in my head when I think of Since.

And After.  Sometimes I am talking and I will say ‘right After’ like that, with a capital.  Then I realise the person I’m talking too probably doesn’t know what I mean, and I have to go back and say – what, what do I say?  Usually it’s ‘After the stuff with my dad’ or ‘After the shit went down’.  So vague.  But it seems too small to say ‘after my dad died’ and too uncomfortable to say ‘after he killed himself’.  That’s not really what I mean, anyway.  After my whole life changed, forever.  You don’t just drop that one into conversation!

Well, anyhow.  I realised it’s been six months Since, and I hadn’t noticed. 

It’s been a hard couple of weeks, though.  The idea of socialising literally makes me want to run away and hide – and that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing.  Hiding.  It’s nice that I can, but it’s also pretty darned boring.  Especially since it’s so cold, all there is to do is huddle by the fire.  And knit, I suppose, but although I haven’t lost my mojo, I’m not being lit on fire by any of my projects at the moment. 

But this morning, after I had done some tidying, put some laundry on, I was puttering around my study, putting things away.  And I got cross with my needles.  As one does.

See, I bought a bunch of bamboo DPNs on ebay.  10mm to I think 2mm.  15cm long.  Too many to fit in my needle roll that I bought off etsy, many moons ago.  So they were sitting in a pile in my stash shelves, looking untidy, sliding around.  And I thought ‘I need a new needle roll.’

Then I looked at my sewing machine, which I’d just moved into a more accessable position and I thought ‘… I could make a needle roll.’

So I did.  It’s not perfect, not close.  But I thought of it, and then I sat down and did it.  I made a thing, where before there was not that thing.  I forgot how good that feels!

There’s something thrilling about those chalk marks.

Can I tell you how much I love that ‘mum?  Lots.  That’s how much.

The fabric is from a big (obviously handmade) pillowcase that my sister saw in an op shop and bought for me, because it’s my colours.  As demonstrated by the fact that it exactly matches my favourite handbag:

I am pleased it didn’t go into my stash to marinate.  I am pleased that I DID something with it!  I am pleased that I like it, and I had fun making it.

If I did it again, I would make the rows closer, so they sit on top of each other more.  I would make the flap at the top longer.  And I wouldn’t be stupid and sew the tab I was going to use as a clasp on the inside of the thing.  DUH. 

However, it is made, and it WORKS!  And I did it all myself in about an hour.  I am pleased as punch.

Now what else can I make?

Love and Friendship

I felt better today, going to work.  Still cranky.  Still irritable.  But at a surface level, not a deeper level of discontent like I’ve been feeling lately.  I’d still have preferred to be home by the fire, knitting.  But I wasn’t so bummed that I wasn’t.

Suse linked me today to Thirdcat.  I left a comment on one of Thirdcat’s posts.  And she wrote me back.  When I mentioned my difficult relationship with my mother, she recommended a book called ‘Motherless Daughters’ by Hope Edelman.  That name sounded familiar, so straight away I emailed my oldest friend, who happens to work in our excellent library about 12 metres away from my desk.  Since I work in Human Services, the library happens to specialise in that sort of thing.  It has about five copies of this particular book, and so my friend not only loaned it out to me (as well as extending ‘Children of the Self Absorbed’, which I can’t bring myself to read, yet) but brought it straight to my desk.

This evening I arived home as tired, cold and hungry as usual, but in considerably better spirits.  The evening was mine!  And if I chose to fritter it away on the computer, then I damn well would.  I didn’t choose to, though.  First, I chose to check the washing that was on the line.  Despite having been heavily rained on ALL last night and most of this morning (serious.  It’s like it’s actually winter or something!  This water from the sky thing – novel, that’s for sure) it was DRY!  HORRAY!  So I took it in.  Hanging and taking down is something I find particularly meditative.  It will now, of course, sit in a basket for a week since while I find folding it equally medatative, I also hate it.  But howsoever that may be, the washing was dry, and it is inside.  There is something about having clean laundry done that makes me feel good about life.

Then, I ran a bath, made toast and tea, and hopped into said bath with said toast, tea, and aforementioned book.

I read the introduction and the first chapter, had several good cries, and emerged from the bath feeling dehydrated and headachey, but having managed to find my equilibruim.  Who knew it was in the bath!

There were several things that even this much of the book clarified for me.  I may even have to go through it later and quote bits of it.  However, the most important of them are thus:

• There is a difference between my mother and T (her name).  I have T in my life.  I have not had my mother, as I would like her, in my life for a long long time now.  This loss was a continuum, so I can’t give you a moment or even a month.  All I know is, there is a gap in my life where that relationship should be.  I already knew this, but still.  Further to that:

 

• This loss is made more abrasive by the fact that T is  in my life.  I can’t trust that relationship, and it’s not the one I want it to be.  But I can’t ever have a good relationship with her, one where I feel safe and comfortable, until and unless I let go of the idea that she can ever fill that mother role.  I think that is lost forever.  And that is hard  to let go of!  I sort of had, before, but all the emotion and dramas made me need it more than I ever have before.  But I need to delineate the two different things in my head.

 

• My father actually filled a lot of the role of ‘mother’ in my life.  In fact, there were several phrases that I’ve thought the last couple days that were word for word in the book. 

In a lot of ways, our family was traditional.  My mother sewed and cooked, my dad made things from wood and tinkered with the cars.  But he also darned all our socks, was in charge of getting all splinters out and kissing the wounds, as well as helping us learn our multiplication tables when we were struggling, making the tea and the lunchtime sandwiches, and organising family outings.  Sure, our mum made sure they didn’t miss parent teacher interviews and made the evening meals.  But she also played the traditional ‘dad’ role in more important ways – the dismissive anger, the blusters and storms, being the focus of the family unit.  Meanwhile, my dad was always in the background, always a support, always a point of reference.

I didn’t realise how very very much he was a point of reference until he was gone.  Until I was alone.  Until I knew that I didn’t know how to be an adult, not really, I’d just been faking it this whole time, playing house.  And now I was going to have to work it out by myself.  I was going to have to buy the drill, hire the truck, be IT support for my sister, work out interest rates… and more importantly, I had lost my moral compass, the surety that there was always someone behind me, never judging but never compromising.  Who knew me and loved me but wouldn’t hesistate to tell me if they thought I was off track.

And now I’ve got to do that for myself.  And it’s scary.  It’s freeing – especially given the mother situation, I now feel like I answer to no one, at the final count.  But it is also deeply terrifying.  I never really felt the true meaning of loneliness before.  But now I understand it, although I am luckily enough to have enough lovely people around me not to truly feel it – to be insulated from it’s coldness.

“We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.” – Orson Wells

Water music

Yesterday improved.  And then again, it didn’t.

All my metaphors and similies end up being about water.

It’s like a well.  You can empty it, but it fills back up again.  And when it does, you’ve GOT to empty it.  Or it’ll overflow.  Flood the place.

 Had a giggling fit or two with the two younger girls in the office.  A much pleasanter way off letting of steam than crying.  Felt drained afterwards, the way you do after a good cry.  But it was still there.  I could feel it.

I went to Emma’s for dinner.  Bus ride there was uneventful.  Got off the bus, started walking down the street ot her house.  It was dark and cold.  To the right of me the sky was pitch black.  On my left, there was a thin strip of orange, quickly fading to deep blue.  The stars were pinpricks of light, startlingly clear and bright.  I looked up at the moon (on my right), and it had a halo around it, shining through the cold.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I had a memory.  Something I’d forgotten.  My honours year, I’m living at home with my parents (let’s not discuss what a poor idea that was).  There’s a comet.  I think it must have been comet McNaught, which would pin this date to Sunday January 14, 2007. It’s right near the sun, so you can only see it right at sunset.  The problem?  My childhood home is in a valley, nesteld between rolling hills.  The sun sets there a good hour before actual sunset.  In fact, the whole area is in a dip.  Finding somewhere to comet watch will be a challenge.  My dad’s up for it – he loves astronomy and comets are, of course, particularly cool.  He mentions going to go look for it.  My sister is disinterested.  My mother expresses disdain for the idea.  My curiousity and sense of history is tickled, but I am feeling lazy.  It’s been a hot day, and I’m disinclined to go anywhere.  But I can see he wants to go, doesn’t want to go alone.  So I throw my hat in the ring.  Mad rush to get ready, grab shoes, quick!  The sun’s setting!  The comet will be gone soon!

We jump in the car.  My dad drives us North, suddenly veers off onto a dirt road I’d never seen before.  This is my dad, who always drives exactly 7 k/h below the speed limit, who pulls over every chance he gets to let the more impatient drivers past.  Sometimes trucks overtake him.  He’s driving down this dirt road, bumping up the hills, trees whipping the windows, full tilt.  It’s single lane, and once we see another car whipping along the other way, dust blooming behind it.  We both have to creep up the edge of the road to get past.  Then my dad FLOORS it again.

We find a hill.  It’s some sort of relay tower.  It’s fenced off, but we climb over, or under, as our fancy takes us.  Almost certainly tresspassing.  My dad never breaks the rules.  Ever.  We have a clear, spread out view of the valleys around us.  We can see fields and houses.  Nothing familiar.  I don’t really know where we are.  I don’t think I could find this place again.  I can see Lobethal and Gumeracha sparkling in the distance.  One to the left, one to the right.  But they look a long way off in the clear air.

And we made it in time, too.  the sun is just dipping below the horizon.  It’s lighting up the sky with that deep orange glow.  Then gradients of blues stripe the sky above it. 

And there, right next to the sun, is the comet. 

Its tail is streaming behind it like a train.  It stretches out what must be miles behind it.  It’s a good two centimetres to my human eye, from my earthly viewpoint.  Two centimetres of dramatic tail on a mere speck of a comet – the size of a pin prick.  What a show off!  Or perhaps it’s a drag queen.  Very Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. 

I look at it and switch between seeing it as I see it – a bright point of light with a streamer of white behind it – and as it is – a block of dust and ice, roaring through lonely space, shedding bits of itself in a blazing tail. 

My dad and I don’t talk much.  We watch as the sun sets and it gets clearer.  We swap the binoculars between us.  We sit on the fence and contemplate it.  It looks ominous.  I can understand why people used to think they were harbringers of doom.  But sitting up here on the hill with my dad, with the green of my homeland spread around me like a skirt, like a blanket that some child is playing make-believe on, I feel nothing but peace.

Eventually the sun sets, the comet disappears beneath the horizon too, and we trudge back to the car and drive slowly home.

I remembered this last night and it stopped me in my tracks.  Literally.  It burst into my brain, the whole experience unfolding in a second, and I stopped dead.  I said ‘shit’.  And I burst into tears, there on the footpath.  I stood there for a good five minutes, sobbing, before I blew my nose, wiped my eyes, and walked towards the glowing light in front of Emma’s house, where I had a wonderful dinner with friends that went a long way towards restoring my equilibrium.

What shocked me was the suddeness of it.  This forgotten memory just burst in on me, unannounced.  How many more are waiting to do this?  I have felt that trivial memories are suddenly more weighted – remembering times that were normal and every day, but now take on the significance of  a thunderstorm.  Because I am the only one who remembers them, now?  This memory is so clear, so crystaline.  I can SEE the dirt track, I can SMELL the dust, I can FEEL the rough wood I sat on to watch the comet.  My memory, and my dad’s.  Shared between two.  Now carried only by one.

I knew this wouldn’t be easy.  I keep forgetting that, though.  I am FINE.  Right up until I am not, and then it all takes so much energy to hold together that I have to go into survivial mode. 

I feel so out of control!  None of it is anything I can do anything about.  I’m not good at my emotions at the best of times, but this is ridiculous.  Even my memories are doing their own thing.  Who’s driving this thing, I’d like to know!

I didn’t expect was the physicality of grief.  I didn’t know about this, but apparently it’s very common.  I’m tired, my body is tired, I literally feel shaky.  And it’s so forceful.  There’s no denying it when it comes, the very best I can do it ward it off until a more appropriate time.  But the more I do that, the harder it gets.  So I have to pick the times, use it sparingly. 

I guess I’m learning to respect my grief, if that makes any sense.  It’s like the sea.  You play by the rules, you know how to act in a storm, you take precautions, and you’ll be ok.  Probably.  If you think that just because it’s blue skies and smooth sailing now that you don’t need your life jacket, then you’re in for a rude shock!

 I just sort of wish I could see land from here.