mental health

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Island Blog – My Face, I Think.

Jeez but it gets harder to click onto my own writing page. I have to caterpillar my way through botstops and signposts facing backwards at best, nowhere at worst. However, it is as it is and this automaton fantasia will not leave me behind. I can feel my face lifting and falling, twisting and flexing as I write this. I have such a face. To be honest, it seems that my face works as a singular whereas one might suppose I was, at least partly in control. When I hear something someone says or reveals, my face is right there, showing off, definitely that, long before my considered response, with appropriate facial confirmation ,has a flipping chance to catch up. It’s like holding back a wild colt on a fraying rope, and that might just be a good piece of imagery.

It isn’t that I can’t control my face because I can….ish. It takes longer now with all the wrinkles, each with their own opinions, their sense of place. They are not just ruffles of skin, no collective. They are independent runnels, valleys of ponderance, elevations of realisation. It’s exhausting managing them. And it is my face by the way, not that they give a toss about that. So, when someone says something that rises a response in me, one which I absolutely know how to hold, to control, to banish into complete annihilation, my face takes over. It shows. And, if my face is busy considering, faltering perhaps, the eyes have it. Darn. I can spend many awkward seconds flicking away, looking for something giving me time, me, not the rebel face, not the eyes, not the truth.

Ah! The truth.

We live so much in lies – a word which creates immense trouble but it isn’t a long one, so easily tackled. Over ‘polite’ time it has become a white dissolution, barely there at all, a wisp, a nothing. But we all notice, we all see because this……our innate connection to ourselves is strong. We know what we know. Don’t need affirmation. Don’t need acceptance. If we are ‘outsiders’, considered disconnected, awkward, different, weird, hold to that. It is a gift.

I have a word for you. Aspectabund. It is long dead in dictionnary world but I like it. It means he/she/they who wear emotion on their face/s. It was understood then that emotion carried import and a certain control over logic of the day. I rest there, as does my face, I think.

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Island Blog – Authenticity, Honesty and Fun

Early this morning, as the sun warmed like a surprise, I was out cutting some sweet peas, cornflowers, pink things, yellow things and some green leaves from a Somebush, when two men wandered by. I know them. They are islander friends. Because it wasn’t raining, we talked awhile. One of them commented on the piece I had written in the local paper, said how brave I was to be so open about the truth of me. Me, behind a huge climb of sweet peas, still clipping, smiled and said, Well, I am an open book, nothing to hide and honest about tough times, because we all have them. Two thinks after they had merried their way along were, one, what the hell did I write, and two, why isn’t everyone honest about the tough times? I have spent the day ruminating like the sheep in the field below my home, pondering these two. Of course, the answer to the first is easy to answer because I dashed inside, found the page and read my words. Okay, I thought, no big deal, I just was authentically honest about how I felt at that time. The second question dithered me a lot. It is a big question and also a little one. I see the little one like a skinny thing on a cold street, running barefoot whilst the big question is in the minds of those who don’t have a clue about that experience, even though they do because everyone knows the skinny street runner within, hungry for something or someone, cold and lonely. Everyone.

Pretence, however, is what we are so good at. The fact that the answer to How Are You, requires ‘Fine’, is evidence enough. That it is immediately accepted is unfortunate, to say the least, but the secondary fact that we morph into the Fine responder so easily, is scary. It becomes a thing, denying truth, denying authentication, dissolving honesty. Oh, I realise that nobody wants to hear the troubles of another, not randomly. In this crazy and blinkered (my opinion) race for ‘success’ we are too busy and too forward thinking, aka on our own trajectory, to bother with whimpers. Words there to think about. Troubles, Another, Blinkered,Success, Busy.

Back to me. I listen to many songwriters, read many poets, listen to many innovative speakers, hear the honesty and the involute complexity of the way they work words into a beautiful tangle of authenticity. There is no fixing, words and passions, truths told, honest reveals, truthful presentations. I am he, I am she. I have failed and failed. I have walked the wrong path, fallen many times, been lifted up, lifted myself up. I have followed the wrong leaders, sunk in endless bogs, felt fear and cold and shame and guilt. But I have learned this. The world brings in a synapse of wild complication. There is this way, there is that way. An inquisitor will try them all out. That’s me. I know the cold fear of valleys and the elation of mountain tops, but I find the pretence that valleys don’t exist hard to allow. Nonetheless this is not a challenge I would bring to a falsehood I clock in nanoseconds on meeting anyone. I just wish it wasn’t there, wish that the great British stiff upper lip nonsense had melted away into history, that people could just be honest about their lives, themselves, to be truly and bravely authentic, and then to take action, to have fun. Fun. Remember that?

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Island Blog – Connections and Fairytales

I notice, as a blogger in these new days that if I don’t blog for a while, I am forgotten. It is up to me at such a time to relocate myself and to get through all the other Judys, a definite and determined swim from the depths. At first I felt annoyance, then a sense of dismissal, of loneliness. I wasn’t important, noticed, valued anymore. Frome where I am right now, I laugh at this. Of course we are forgotten, of course connections move on and up and over and return, although the return bit is always down to human connection. Everything is fluid and nothing is a given and this swirltide is how it is. Personas are shaped and twisted, photos of real people are synced and redesigned according to the accord of the finger or the brain working with the outblast of inter-intelligence. Hush, now. A lot of all of this is really good. Many more trifocal revelations and understandings. Many more bots and trolls. But this isn’t new, people. They were always there.

For centuries good folk have lived with such an alternative dynamic, worked with it. They connected. They met, together, laughing drinking in island crofts, isolated places in the outer wilds and also deep within cityal streets with pubs welcoming and shops selling veg and material for your curtains and cheese and eggs and kindness. I met many of them. I met their determination to keep on keeping on. I was a furious middle-class 16 year old and pounding the streets. I came to the market and we talked. I will not forget those marketeers, for they wound me web stories, talked of families, of hope of fun, of fun, of fun, of fairies, of stories.

Even in these forgetting times, I still believe we need connections.

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Island Blog – Beginnings

I meet them all the time. Here’s one. The trolley thing which holds an entire orchestra around lunchtime in the cafe has one swivel wheel twisted out. I skinny around, loaded with dried bowls, whisks, palette knives, sieves, whisks etcetera and my fast foot meets said twist. I remember, in a nanosecond the dancer in me, old yes, but innate, born in, fast and determined. Another is when I lift a load of heavy plates and their etceteras from the wishdosher, lower than my knees, mentally connecting,, with a eye-rolling ‘hey!’ to my strong core. We have to do this, I have to do this, because she, the core, can so easily fall asleep, thus forgetting herself and I need her, sleepy or not. These tiny beginnings I notice. I notice that I can do this.

All through any day, a cafe day, a not cafe day, I can hear so many spoken thoughts, random as skitters, flying wild, just spat out because there is that chance, that moment, that connection, that beautiful second when someone listened, heard, stayed a moment or two. As I wash up, walk out, serve, clear tables, chatter flies above us. Nothing lands, not for me, not for us as cafe workers, but there are times when a word and a table stops me in the buffers. I can see myself halt, heavy tray of china, detritus, cups, glasses, positionally armed and wondering if I will actually make it to the stackeroo and seeing without any connection, a new beginning.

I have many thinks about beginnings. I thought I did, that the only one I would go through was the day I said yes to marriage to a man, and it was easy. I fell in love and even though I completely don’t agree with falling, it happened. But in the now of my solo now, I look for more and find the beginnings in moments and interactions and connections I may well have missed before. There’s a something in that. There is so much, so much out on social media pushing out the unrealistic as if we fail if we don’t have perfect nails. I know that’s not all of it.

I begin with being open, aware and noticing and right where I am. Yes, I am on a beautiful West Coast island. I do not live in urban tricky. I don’t live in abuse, control, fear. I don’t even know how that feels beyond imagining.

The way I see beginngs is this. Angry spoilt middle class teenager thinking she could escape her life and the morning after. We are born where we are born. Identity grows and dishevels and what? I don’t know.

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Island Blog – The Grannies, the Shelf and Doorways

We are many. We are legion. We step back having been the quickstep for decades. We hold the walls, hold to the walls. We keep the balance, we interfere, we quicken and we falter. We don’t know who the hec we are a lot of the time, apologize and curtsey in doorways we never knew existed before, not in this house of endless meals, of welcomes, of beds made up short notice, late talking, of searching without the right language into the new world, one we really don’t understand, the lie of the land all around the home, bodies everywhere, party detritus tidal in its curve over a once ok carpet. Of a lot of holding back, of rubbing old tinsel lips in ponderance, of confusion and inexellence, where once we were excellent, the ones who bandaged, made fast decisions, even overriding the hesitating grandpas, who btw were astonished to find themselves on that high shelf, in my generation. In the laughness I see exactly that in the generation after me. Nobody is ready for that shelf.

For me, oh I know I am lucky, fortunate, blest, whatever. But I do remember the full stops, the commas, the parenthesese which came like a blow. It was never that I was eradicated, never that, but I sensed the invitation to full stops, commas and doorways. I was suddenly not who I was. Not excluded, never that, but there grew woods and motorways and lifestyles that rose up between us, between me as the feeder, accommodator, welcomer, and the new woman in his life, the new man in hers. It thinked me of those shunting trains on tracks, always going backwards. And I did. I curved away, into foetal at times, unsure of my voice. I had never even thought about my voice before. I lived in chaos, beautiful chaos, exhausting chaos for many many years and I was she. I was She. I lost my voice. Not the actual voice but the knowledge of it, the recognition for me. It had been an usual, ribboned, rainbowed, musical, gifted and now the hesitation to emit anything vocal spun me into a hole in the ground.

Something rose me, rised me up. It was the acceptance that you, young person, now my child’s beloved, is a generation below me. I want to learn from you. I also see your welcome. I am aware of doorways. I respect you, see your dreams, love that you want time with me, invite me into your video games and endlessly bleeping iPad or whatever trackillion light tracts. And your beautiful children, real humans with a truant of consilplisit emotions and longings and dreams. And I am still Granny, or one of them. There is always a welcome, warm food, bandages and no judgement although I might twist a tea towel at you if you don’t help with the washing up.

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Island Blog – I Matter

I do this checking body language thing, watching people, wondering and knowing, even though there will be never be proof of what I surmise. She is the controller in this relationship and he doesn’t like it but never found the courage to say and now, bowed as he is, it’s too late. Or He is bloat-chested and very chuffed with himself as she follows obedientally, agreeing to his choice of her coffee rather quicker that I’d like. However, to my delight, a pizzicato in the mathematics of this cafe running thing, a young family changed my daily stuck. Young parents, looked easy, together, although I did clock the male as leader. That’s ok and fine and wonderful as long as it doesn’t mean domination and control and, looking at her, I think that’s a Never. They came together the beautiful (I thought) parents of 3 little ones. They bought this, that cake and then, as i washed up for Scotland, I heard their children, their play in the area with a rug and safety with draws of toys, for definitely an hour. We worked on in the washeroo and in the kitchen, serving soup and focaccias and this and that herbal tea, for two, with oat milk, no milk, cold water, and so on, with scones, plus jam, without, lemon cake, flapjack, banana loaf divide into two, add this, possible?

Everything is possible. So we’re told. I think we learn ‘possible’ through difficult times. When everything is easy, we don’t seek anything and certainly not a change option. In fact we actively avoid that. But in the mostways of our days we do seek change even in little shafts of light, just a tiny something, a lift, a beckoning. I met the wrong people at such times, followed the wrong beckoning. I think many do and then those brilliant strong and compromised people become beige at best afraid and hiding, but so slowly and over time. Life calms to mouse quiet and so very lonely.

I am fighting self doubt daily. It doesn’t matter what I have achieved. It’s never about that. It’s always about someone I admire, and respect telling me I matter. Even now.

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Island Blog – Beautiful Words

For weeks I have not been able to drive, not since early May, maybe before. I forget. The initial shock of being told I couldn’t see well enough to be safe on the roads, even these single track roads when most everyone I met coming at me was someone who knew my sassy mini and who waved and whom I recognised. It felt like I had been taken prisoner without the offer of bail. My own home grew bars, my thoughts grew bars, not musical, but steel and silent. Thing is this. Without my ability to drive, I am no longer independent. Yes, I can walk down the village, and I did every day just for conversation and milk or wine or cheese or garlic, but going any further was forbidden to me, just like that.

It began in Africa. Took me a few days of fear and denial to admit that everything was cloudy and at other times a firework display. My son whooshed me to an optometrist who confirmed that the cataract (whatever the hec that is) in my right eye had suddenly come about. Come about was a term I recognised in advanced ballroom dancing lessons, at which I was apparently good at and at which I won a gold medal. My partner didn’t which surprised us both. I thought I was a visionary, one who sees far ahead and believes, but it was as if I had sunk into the depths. I don’t stay there but I have to tell you that the days became weeks, time slowed and the doubts took on caps. I would wake each day determined to be positive, usually effortless, and almost before I had sternly and confidently made strong black coffee at 0500, I felt the downpull.

I travelled to my cataract operation, as you already know, and the hoped for change in my life took about ten minutes. Seemed too easy. But the doubt kept whacking me in the gut. I applied the drops, didn’t bend over my waist (who does that anyway?) didn’t lift anything heavier than a half full kettle. Seriously? For 4-6 weeks when I live alone? What about the box of bird fatballs or bringing in wood? What about pulling on my shoes? What about the fact that I am the only me in this glorious wee home and things happen, heavy things, bendy things? I followed instructions nonetheless. My eyes are everything. My driving my independence, my sudden choice to go here or there, to give a lift, to get out and beyond my thoughts.

Today, this day, the day after Solstice, the day after Father’s Day, I go to the mainland and the ferry works to time. I have time, arriving way early to be safe. My heart is overbeating herself. I tell her, wheesht. We are fine, even though we might not be. Whatever comes, comes. We can do this. I wander. I never wander in Oban. I get out quick. Too many people doing this wandering thing, much pavement dodging. A non-stop stream of cars, although that word doesn’t work. Not a stream, more a punch. I stop at a cafe, settle outside, order a black americano. Delightful place. I converse with a couple going to St Kilda, and two young women who had bought crofts and had sheep. They all lifted me as I watched the doors of Specsavers open. In I go.

I brought in so many fears I am surprised we all got in. I know this place and the welcome is fresh as a new morning. I sat, not long, called in to the optometrist and resisted telling her she held my future in her hands. She was beautiful and gentle and laughed with me and still the unbeliever in me has met that before sentence was delivered. And then she said. ” You eyes are healthy, no problem anywhere. Your vision is sharp now. You can drive.

I never heard such beautiful words.

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Island Blog – An Olding with a Rainbow

For a wordsmith, words can fail me. It is tempting to think that this is a definite, the way it will always be. So melodramatic, but true, nonetheless. In the olding years there are many such quandaries, and much melodrama. We, who when younger faced down everyone else’s demons, including our own, with a get-up-and-go attitude, find ourselves something. Let me find the word…….old comes to mind, alone, lonely, less able, scared, less confident. Okay, none of those do the state justice. Let’s try this. Time. Yes, that works. We are inside a time we never thought would come, as nobody does. Once we were pivotal to the forward motion of our children, our husband or wife or partner. The other to another. In moments shared, in listening, hearing, encouraging, we were the ones who lifted, applauded, held gently back and let go when the fire was strong in a belief, a truth, watching, hoping, believing.

There’s a lonely in olding. Everyone has moved into their own futures, and rightly so, because the otherwise of that isn’t a healthy thing. No young should feel obliged to stay, in my opinion. However, what seems to be a defining lack here are the opportunities for oldies. Oh, I know about meditation and yoga for the over 65’s, the book clubs and the many other sedentary gatherings (excluding yoga), but that is not enough. What about learning to manage a chainsaw so we can cut our own wood, or tango classes, or teaching on how to make a bookcase from driftwood, to check oil levels, change a tyre, re-hang a door?

On the island, there are fine folk in the olding years, dynamic, ready for fun and we make it happen. We are fortunate here in a place where age means zip if you bring fun and laughter into the mix. But still there is something about widowhood that calls in isolation. Days can be long, the clock ticking a slow taunt. Thankfulness helps, walking helps but I can walk longtime and meet nobody. Aha, got it. It’s all about human contact and interaction, as me right now, the old y’un, the one who lives out there with that fabulous view, the one who smiles and makes great craic. Yes, her.

Even if classes for the ‘over 65’s’ was on offer and in the village, I doubt I would go, although Tango dancing might draw me. I am still lithe and bright and utterly surprised that I am 73 with arthritis and limitations. This isn’t about what is not on offer. This is about a defining timeline. I am old. Why do so many refuse to admit that? I find it a finery, as if I just pulled on expensive clothing. The fact that I got this far and after all that, through all that, is like taking on a rainbow, curving it around my shoulders and turning it and myself to the cameras.

For all these weeks when I couldn’t drive after cataract surgery, I have learned much about independence and the determination t’wards the redefining state of new freedom. I will drive again. I will work again at the Best Beach Cafe Ever and soon. People again, interactions, dynamic swivels between happy tables, a valued member of an exciting team, a purpose, a meaning, an importance, an olding with a rainbow.

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Island Blog – The Curve

You make a plan. I make a plan. That’s a straight line, or I planned it so, as if I am some powerful goddess, one who can just carve out this ‘here to there’ line and just know the delight of arrival in this very spot I had tagged on the map, bugles tooting, banners flying, the finish line right there. What a frickin eejit. And, yet, I still do this planning thing, as if, by planning, I supersede all intrusive attacks, as if I have autonomy, as if my marvellous and well constructed map will actually be noticed and included in the chaotic mappery of life.

I don’t know about you, but life is as tough as bark chewing in my experience. Just when you think things are ok (ish) something comes in, something you cannot ignore. It is as though someone, or something is out to get you. It isn’t and I can say that at my old age because I just know. Life is not a straight line. Life is a curve and not one you can predict. And that curve can go any which way and at any time. It is never personal.

What do we learn from this? I don’t think it’s good for mental health to spend every minute expecting curves, trip-ups and the like. But, to be aware of the vision of Life, the way she sees us, helps us rethink ourselves and adapt is a good thing. Those stories of unicorns and happy endings need to go because the seeding of them elevates little believers into the reality of a maelstrom with no clue.

It is tough out there. We need to teach our young more dynamic stuff. I don’t believe in stealing childhood. It’s such a short and precious time, memories fasted in hearts and minds. There are just too many lost boys, too many princesses out there.

Teach the curve, teach the techniques, teach the dynamic, teach.

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Island Blog – Lonely and a Yellow Fallen Thing.

Jeez, every time I type a word, an intriguing word that this isn’t recognised by the world of chiitterlings, I infuriate myself. I can actually feel the twist of a wild in me, until, that is, I remind myself of the days in which we now live. The cobwebby shadowland once called Grammar has been doorshut and locked for a long time, and to be honest, I am the first to squint words into their other possible selves, to re-weave consonants and vowels, to yip and encourage adverbs and adjectives to go home and shower, pick new clothing, make new impact, so I should probably shut the eff up. The word is Nemesism. It means turning aggression and gui

I know what this is. It’s the past of my past and the past of my dead dad, the eloquent deliverer of more grammar than most people could swallow in a lifetime. Oh, but he was marvellous, the way he held a room and it seemed effortless. He brought words into the dance of his story, words nobody understood. I knew that. I watched him, and them, fixts smiles, a little tipsy, clueless. But I got those words, looked them up and when I did I just knew I could never use them, not in the bus queue for work, not in a meet of friends intent on a friday vino collapso. And right there, right in the now of that, rises the Lonely. I have known this companion for ever, for decades and he/she arrived so early. I was about to dive down to the next paragraph, to take this away from me, to write about the Lonely I see, clearly, in my grandchildren. Then I returned, because I don’t want to dilute this. There is too much dilution on the webby world of now. Everything is fine, presentable, perfect, happy and completely not the whole picture.

Reduction. Lonely is everywhere. In all, in the chitterlings, the next linear up, the awkwardlings who suddenly become committed to one home. A collision. It’s like two boats going different ways in a collision and then an okay collusion, plus diffusion ending in confusion. We change. I remember my old dead husband, my beloved, my nightmare saying, all stuck out chest and strutting, that he has not, and never will, change. This informed me. He won’t, so I need too, and I would never have known the choice in that had it not been for his resolute. And that led me into a wonderland of thinks, jinks, augers, fears, sprites, opportunities, dances, shadowlands. Quite an adventure. And not just once. No. Many times over many years because this. You can be be with someone and still be lonely. You can be in a crowd and feel lonely. You can be meeting your trusted friends in a safe place and feel lonely. You can be in a long marriage and feel lonely.

I propped up the falling yellow thing. The whip wind and the rain drag is overwhelming. It came in. I saw the puddles. Cornflowers, sunflowers, many decked, There is Lonely everywhere.