mental health

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Island Blog – I Want Clarity

Yesterday I saw through a misty haze. Today I am seeing detail and clarity. Although there is a falsehood across my eye, it’s like a new windscreen on a car, startling at first and then that glorious rise in the gut, the heart, the belief of it, of seeing everything clear, right there, a sharing, because I am involved.. I am the looking and the seeing. We are complete, a perfection, circling, the tree, the bird and me. It is more than enough. And all thanks to the brilliance of surgery.

I confess to anxiety pre this. Not for the surgery, I know I know zip about surgery and the surgeon has trained for eons to absolutely know, so there is no anxiety there. No, it was the journey, the possibility of a ferry and on time, the hotel I had booked into. Where is it? Let me check. Oh, yes, just a mile away from the hospital. A taxi ride. I had booked at the Premier Inn, Braehead, a bland flat-faced building with no character at all, but. I had spend ages in a taxi from Queen Street just getting here and many quids down and yes, I could have sourced a bus but was compromised, bleary-eyed, anxious and tired, so blow that for a feathering. Tell you one day about ‘the feathering’ – t’is an island thing for husbands to be. Moving on.

The minute I arrived I was welcomed and smiled upon. My room was comfortable and I did manage to get over the fact that the window was/is sealed shut after watching a pitch full of young footballers training. So many, so many teens working like pros to be, really lifted my spirits. I met nothing but kindness in that hotel. The outside belies the inner mother.

Now with family in the North Berwickshire wild, I walk out with sunglasses on, and a gazillion eyedrops sloshing about my eyeball as I watch the swallows swoop among the flies. I can see them clear. I watch the lift and wave of the beech branches beyond the farm gate, the way they definitely do not agree on choreography, the detail of the leaves, the definition clear to me, incisive cuts to make the perfect leaf over and over again, the blood veins. For the first time in more than months. A glorious gift and in a few days even more clarity, and then I won’t doubt myself again because nobody does when they can see ahead. If you know nothing about the road ahead, at least you can see it and thus make an informed choice.

At times I was fine with the mist. It almost laughed me, until it began to compromise my freedom, my independence. I grew up then. I want clarity.

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Island Blog – Borderlines

The tide is high. It’s a May thing. Two full moons and she is sassy with it, building already, shifting tides, lifting beyond established expectations already, anticipating something new and inventive, a space to wide out. I remember that feeling, the opportunity to break through a line drawn in the grit and spit of childhood when I wanted to fly above the whole map and redraw it. There are many lines and I probably don’t need to draw them because anyone living within those confines feel them like chasms or buffers. Either way, you fall. Until you don’t, until you have the courage to ask for help, or to jump, or to just run. Nature does it all the time.

We meet borderlines everywhere. At work, in a community, within a relationship. Some we have to allow and accept, many we don’t. Within our lives, so very much is different. Some of us do have the choice to argue, to demand our own space, our own thinking, our own beliefs and to hear that they are considered despite generational beliefs and accepted confines. Not many, I’m guessing. But in my feral world, in my so called recalcitrant childhood, in my difference and my confusion, there is always the chance for a voice. If it would just find the courage to speak out. I didn’t, but I did find someone who would and did. It happened to be my life partner, and I was lucky in that. Borders did not bother him. He broke borderlines all of the years. But even now in widowhood I remain cautious until I stop and think. And that’s important. In simplicity, this is it and there is me. We don’t match. Obviously it begs the question. And?

In my long life I watch many borderlines shift and pull away in a curve, a gentle thing, a giving, a sharing of space. In communication, within relationships, in moments. Someone chooses not to follow the line. Someone decides to curve and bend, to allow and then to move on beyond the border with a smile.

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Island Blog – The Thread of Kindness

A new Monday at the Best Cafe Ever with a difference. In just a few days I discover I need help along my way. However asking for help when you are fiercely independent is tricky. I know this place and within the confines of it, I have learned much. People want to help. I want to help. It feels us needed and valued when we can proffer a something the other one doesn’t have, or has no access to. I have mellowed in my fierce independence because the only thing I was left with was empty space once my Go-Away hands were believed. I would watch the offer, gentled and meaningful from the mouth of a real friend, dissipate like breath in the air. Okay, I decided, this isn’t working because I do need help with various varieties of vagiaries and something else beginning with ‘v’.

Until I can drive again, once my eyeballs are relocated successfully, all-seeing again and quite marvelling me. I need help. Actually, I will remember this time, when someone with controlled eyeballs can see and watch one bird in the sky, I see two and both are blurry. They could be gulls, small geese, floaters. I enjoy the whole thing but can’t tell you what I’m looking at. Yet. At work I have to ask for help. Is there a table that needs clearing? I make much laughter about the whole thing because I know it is fixable and soon. Meantime I need a lift to work and back and my asking for help has brought me both. This kindness, this extra journey in the time of rising fuel prices, astounds me.

I was tired towards the ending of a day serving and washing and joking with lovely customers and my friend just turned up to bring me home. My boss also offered me a lift. Neither of these men were going my way. This kindness. I never expect it. I know I can get the bus both there and back, but that day is long and my work, (I love my work) is full on. Actually, no. I am full on. I need to work intuitively with the dishwasher, with the plates which need to go through quick, the teapots, the cups and mugs and I love the artistry of my role in the dynamic of cafe life, always, always, unexpectedly unexpected. We can welcome half a ton of human wonderfulness for coffee and cake, 25 ditto for lunch, more for tea, or we can welcome a third of that or a third more. No day is a given.

What thrills me to work each day is the knowing that we work as a team, that our motivation is service and kindness. The owners of this beach cafe lead us and need us. We who have the privelege to work in this place learn the ways quick and it is all about serving. Service in my ancient history was proffered to those of us who had failed all exams and had no idea what the heck to do with their lives. I see service so differently now. It is an honour to serve, to help, to reach beyond the menu, to step beyond the servery. To love a dog, to make another feel welcome, to settle, to allow, to warm another human being. Such an honour.

And that is how I will think and thank my beautiful friends who, in this pre-eyeball relocation, offer to drive out of their way to help me to work and back. I am so full of thankyous and yet I get it. We humans are a team, inside work, beyond it, in a community, everywhere. Kindness is the thread of life.

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Island Blog – The Perfect

See today? It was as if I had moved into another life. Yesterday I could drive my feisty Mini Cooper and today I cannot. I look at her, out there, well not that much ‘out there’ but just the other side of my window. She has a sassy attitude and I love to drive her. Today I have to get the bus, or a lift which I did get. Now hear this. I am no woman who will confound when confoundment steps in as if it owned the whole thing. However I also know that brushing away feelings about the about-ness of something that bursts open a heretofore locked door is foolish. The slam has reckoning and I can feel it.

I knew it was coming. In Africa my one good eye started showing me fantasy. You see one bird, I see two. You see one lorry coming at us, I see two and one of them is in our path. It isn’t a big thing, a cataract op, not now with the skills of surgeons, but the op is not the point. Even though I may no longer need specs (oh happy days) ever again, and will be back to work in the best cafe ever and able to drive again, this all thinks me on the Perfect.

I remember a perfect night when I was so fallen in love that I’m amazed I remained standing. I remember a sudden dance in a wild place, picnics random and crazy, hidden. I remember a friend sharing sweets with me in primary school. I remember that moment when I was lost around Queen St Station, unsure of next train times and the smile and welcome of someone. Hey, you ok? There is something so perfect about that.

When I caught a lift home after a very busy day at the Cafe, I felt so warm, so loved. We talked and laughed and I was delivered to my happy place. The perfect was, yes it was, but the Perfect doesn’t die. It still appears and at surprising moments, at random times. However we need to be open, curious, looking out. At my age it could be so easy to pull on the blanket and just sit. Don’t do it, don’t allow it. The Perfect dies if not fed with sass, determination and curiosity.

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Island Blog – The Influence of the Pause

Not my brilliant words but those of my wordsmith son in Africa, who can just say these things. The brilliance just falls out of his mouth, it seems, without thinking at all and with no sign of a ‘like’ nor an ‘erm’ nor a clearing of his throat as if in a bid to buy time. I had to write it down, and have looked at that phrase on my to-do pad for a few days, letting it influence deeper thought. In fact, I have employed it in my daily round, halting myself in my usual hurtle to nowhere as if somebody just might snip. out an hour or two, thus leaving me believing it is 4pm when, in fact, it’s bedtime. Pausing is indeed influential. For example I am washing my few dishes as quickly as I can, not noticing the plates or the old silver, or the ancient wooden spoon, my favourite and granny’s favourite before me because it has been so favouritised as to have warped and twisted into the perfect of all wooden spoons. I don’t notice the pattern on the plates, bought from the island charity shop when I decided to move on all the stuff I had washed and sparkled for 40 years, and was utterly sick of looking at. I don’t see the old cutlery, solid silver and generations old as I swish it through the suds, not wondering at all of the many hands which did just this in many kitchens when suds did not come in easy-squirt plastic bottles.

The air is warm today even as the sky is shut. Sometimes the sun gets pissed off at being in the wings and blares through the smoke and mirrors, a spread of white light, a dazzle, a blinding. But, mostly, the sky is shut. I did a lot of pausing today, stopping mid whatever and noticing myself within that pause. I could feel myself inhabiting the space this pause created as if I had only just caught up with myself. It was almost a surprise. I don’t know why we hurtle, except, perhaps, it is old training. If I hadn’t hurtled in the days of Tapselteerie, nothing would have come to fruition. What bizarres me is when we are advised to leave the past in the past when our body memory just isn’t listening. Don’t these wise ones know that?

I scattered some poppy seeds, all random and sent hope from own mouth. Are you talking to yourself? laughed a passing walker. No, I said, I’m talking to the poppy seeds. Oh, he said. I love poppies, he said. We have plenty in our garden. Do you talk to them? I asked. Erm, no. Pity, I smiled. They would probably benefit from a well-wish or two. He walked on.

I walked this afternoon, wearing walking sandals for the first time, the warm air encircling me. On the final leg I paused beneath the sycamores and listened to the Bombus, the bumble bees, filling the still air with their wing beats as they bumbled from flower to flower. As I was doing this pausing thing, I heard voices and saw a young couple coming towards me down the hill, full of chatter and love. Do you hear the bees? I asked and they paused. Oh YES! they said and we paused together and they asked me things as I did them. Then I saw her, the young hind walking softly up the track we sort of filled with ourselves. She stopped, looking at us. We are in her path, I told them. She wants to come this way, so let’s move into the trees. Immediately we had stepped aside, the beautiful creature walked confidently on and we watched her, saw her soft body, her straight back, her beautiful dark eyes, her long legs for the running.

And we marvelled at the influence of the pause.

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Island Blog – Reasons to Celebrate

There are, approximately 9450 words beginning with ‘C’. Well, damnit, I can never find any of them when playing scrabble, or, maybe, I don’t have the insiders like the flipping vowels, or, maybe, the other player has stuck the damn ‘C’ at the top of an Eiffel Tower from which there is no escape. It’s a pinnacle, and if, if, there is a Z or another impossible consonant affixed way too close to said ‘C’ then, basically, I am f**ked. However, that C challenges me, makes me both furious and determined to like it at all. I don’t mind it in ‘nice’ or spice’ or priced, or all those other words which seem to employ the C as a follow on. I like it in Niece, for example, although the I before E except after C thing in English Language lessons almost grew me wings. The rules of grammar are absolute and infuriating. I know that all that I have learned is not important now, and I accept that, whilst feeling a tingle of sadness for the beauty of what is lost.

I look for the C beginnings. Caring I know that one, the way of it. How about champagne? Ah, now that gives me tingle. Even though chairlift, coercion, confinement and control rise into my head, I know how it is to celebrate. No matter the years of awful, for anyone, if celebration is a sparkler within, then celebration will out. However and however, I wonder if folk darken, lose their hold on the fun of life, deny themselves the grabbing of moments when the sun.suddenly shines after months of darkness and rain? Noteveryone. Not me.

As a family we celebrated everything, every achievement, every brave move, every birthday, everything. Through tough times, through loneliness and exclusion, through self-doubt and sibling rivalry, through all of it, there snuckles a smidge of hope and if grasped, barely breathing, this snuckle can bring the C back three paces.

Celebration. Such a wonderful word and, just to say, I am proud of C getting to the front of a very big word. Celebrate everything, every moment, everyone. I know life is damn tough right now, but bring the damn C to the front.

Celebrate, Celandine, Collective, Creedence, Cherish, Community, Charisma, Co-ordination, Collusion, Co-piloting.

Let’s go with this, plus Champagne of course!

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Island Blog – Bumble, Soup and Times Ahead

I wake in my old thoughts a few times in the night for no good reason beyond the immense shackalackle of fat rain crashing down and making a noise I might have reported to the Noise Police had I not realised what it was and therefore controlled my inner fishwife. The thoughts were weird, random, old stuff. I did the ‘wheesht’ thing with my hands, both of them. Thoughts are uncontrollable. It thinks me of those teachers who go into schools and who, though strong on their subject, just cannot hold the room and are thus vulnerable to the jokesters. I am trying, over decades, to teach my thoughts, and they are pupils even now. I can brandish my wand until I become the catherine wheel, but they won’t, don’t listen to me, no matter how many sparks I spiral out into the night, any night. I must befriend them. Much like teachers, I guess.

As I drove the skinny road to work this morning, I felt so excited. I mean something here. I am someone. I am the Washeroo. Others can do it all, with eloquence and majesty but I love that place. It used to be about hiding and I could. nobody could see me there. I love the change that the Calgary Cafe has wrought in me. It was an invitation and, I am sure, a risk, but here I am again and who knew how many dancing staff could shimmy around each other with dozens of lunch orders and with tunes on, and with changes and skedaddles on table shifts and others suddenly joining and the joy in it all.

My break. I grabbed a courgette, pea and mint soup in a big cup and took myself off to Pixty. As I opened the door, I tipped the hot soup, not much but enough to singe fingers. I did laugh and opened my windows to the warm sun. A bumble flew in, beautiful, sharp arse, conifer stripe. Hey, I said, quietly. I got the trapped thing in its buzz. I held my fingers up and it landed there. Then, window open gone.

New Times ahead.

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Island Blog – It takes Time

I used to be lonely, and for years, not just after himself took off to the stars, although that sideswiped. me a ton truck more than I had expected. When you care for a partner, and for so very long, you can find yourself wanting it to end.

I used to envy oldies like me walking past my island home holding hands and actually talking happily together. I used to slow down, to tackle any task wounting my steps, pausing a lot. Any task would have taken me five minutes plus a bit in the past. But the past is gone and I am very changed. Most of that change is olding, and we all face that, in time, but there is a lift and lift of responsive changeability, which kind of implies I did the changing myself. I did. I knew I didn’t want to hover over the past, wishing a load of shit away. I knew, instead, that I wanted to be someone, be something, no matter any demise, any trauma, any loss. And, the answer was/is simple. I hate that because it isn’t. However, over the last six odd years, suddenly alone and not just in the death of himself, but of my family leaving the island, I have learned much. Actually this learning thing has surprised me with its results. It seems to me that, by just a gentle daily practice with intention, a whole. way of seeing and believing shifts like something underwater and unseen.

I. wanted. to decide I was perfectly okay with all those happy lives around me. I wanted not to feel lonely and. definitely not needy., but a decision like that has. no legs because it’s all about willpower, and mine is floppy. I don’t know when I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself, to question my going out there among friends with a rictus smile, the great pretender. But I do. remember. hiding, facing nothing, living in minutes, filling in hours, drudging my days. And at some point I found light, just a twinkle, a tiny something that lifted my. heart, made me smile. Could. have been a. hug that was real, a hold. Could have been the stranger who wanted to chat in the veg. section of Dugie’s. Could have. been a kindness on the road to a dentist appointment. I don’t remember.

When the whatever began it showed as faith in humanity. I felt seen and heard. I mattered, and that made me ‘matter’ up. I began. to appear, to rock up, to step up. Now I work, now I walk, now I see couples go by hand in hand and wave and smile and wish them a wonderful evening. Now I feel that I miss nothing at all. I can embrace those slow minutes and, when I put on tunes, can dance through rooms that hold only happy memories. I remember so much now that my mind is rid of all that angst. The key for me is thankfulness. When I wake, whatever the striations of the night, I greet the dawn with a thankyou. As I go through my day I thank and allow. The things that irritate are only there when we feel like confronting. If we don’t, if we just back up, back down. then I recommend the peace that comes from that decision. Everyone has a tough life.

This takes a decision and practice and a lot ot Time. They say Time is an illusion. I like them.

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Island Blog – Thoughts and Feelings

It is so good to be home, and. that thinks me. Learning as I have from others, wiser than I, I make my mind go deep on them. It is too easy to think a thought or to feel a feeling and for either to skitter off like kangaroos. I want to grab them and to hold either and for us, together, to burrow deeper. What is it about coming home that really makes it so wonderful? What is it about that feeling that so caught me by surprise? It can be catch in breath, a skitter in the belly, a wildflower in the mind, or a sudden desire to run. It can be so many things, but without deep thought it can decide itself and that is usually a mistake. As long as we surface glide over feelings and thoughts we can make wrong decisions, ones we later regret. However, it is understandable that we do this surface gliding thing because nobody ever taught us how to hold, to allow, to let a reaction breathe for itself. Instead, we react. I have reacted so often in my life that I have learned the inefficacy of it. Not always, of course, not when a situation requires it in order to save someone from falling into the beyond of themselves, but often when there was nobody nor nothing in danger beyond my pride or the invasion of my personal space or my crappy decision to go inside when I knew that inside was a trap.

Situations mellow me for sure, people, friends, community, a safe place, home. This is a truth, although even this will never stop the budgie flutters of awkward encounters and situations, most of which happen in my beautiful island home and when I am all alone and in my own mind. Thinks and feelings have, as it seems, no boundaries. And I love the challenge. In my youth, nobody mentioned feelings. In fact I do recall being remonstrated with for the abundance of my own as if. I was somehow poisoned and potentially a dange. to others. I was, I know it. Without. a clue and in my youth I just know I ‘infected’ others. Who in my days ever ever spoke of feelings. or developed thoughts? Answer…..Nobody.

Thus my feelings about being home list thus….. warmed, welcomed, safe, protected. My thoughts are scattermagic. They will settle as I let them breathe. Half of them are still in Africa after all. The key is to allow, to give thoughts and feelings time because they are up against all the fears, anxieties, imaginary demons, realtime horribles and more, already swirling like crows inside any of us, and they will wait for a clearer sky in which to unfold.

I am home and that is more than enough.

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Island Blog – Eluctation, elucidation and endings

The ending of my son’s golden retriever is a wonderful thing to follow. He sways all sassy without having a clue he’s doing this sassy thing as we walk through the vineyards over sand tracks all cobbled with stone-rush thanks to the recent heavy rains. He has four legs so his walk is more of a glide than mine as I pick my way over ostrich egg-sized stones. The sun is already fire-bright and hot at 0900 and there is red sand between my toes. My feet look like I haven’t washed in weeks which isn’t the case. As the three of us walk, there are many strides of silence peppered with sprinkles of shared ideas or information. The vines are turning gold and copper now, curving into rest, their long and important work done for another year.

We talked of how the world is now, for a bit, but didn’t stay there too long. The thing about my family is that, whatever comes (or came) our way, we always see the wotwot of it, are as aware as we can be, and then quickly find what we can control and all that we cannot. That is where we begin because we have all learned the dangers of being an ostrich. You just get run over by either the next ostrich or worse, a lorry. When there is a moving on in someone’s world or over the whole damn world, those who freeze will not survive. I know many of my ageless age who say they are glad they are old, and I have said it myself, but once I thought that through, I pulled up my head and looked around.

I cannot stop what is happening, and, by the way, nor can anyone. This is not an ending. To watch the news every day only hurts the watcher because I never do and it is all happening to me as well. My mind is clear, my limbs old, my usefulness……..? Good hesitation there. What is my usefulness? A simple question and a sort of park bench reflective moment. Elucidation, the light moment. In my community, within my family and wide circle of friends, I can bring some light. How do I do that? Oh, not with wise words, not with uplifting nonsense, not when they may well be downed as starving rivers, carving whatever path they can through red sand valleys just to get somewhere that isn’t here. Not that. So what is my call? What is my walk when false eluctation will only result in a turnaway?

To remember the magic, that’s it. There are children here still with unicorns and stars in their eyes. And not just the children. We all have a choice here. We moan and groan, grow grey and shallow, lightless and downturned, or we rise to this. We’ve done it before, after all. Perhaps we just need reminding.