mental health

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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.

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Island Blog – Alternates and a Finagle

You can wake up feeling the other side of marvellous. I do. All the guilts and swithers come in like vultures on the carcass of me, picking, resolute. At such advances, I turn over, relocate myself, bring my mind into the present which is probably, at such times, about 4 am. The duvet is swirled around my neck, a throttle, my feet cold, the upside of me definitely downside. There might be cramp and there will certainly be the untruth of me coming at me. This is not who I am. This alternate is not welcome. Ok, I need coffee to deal with that in a sentient and settled way, even if I am in a ghastly dressing gown and the only bird out there is a barn owl. At least I am the right way up which I am not in bed. In bed I am compromised, open to all demonic flapjacks.

Thinks me. And what I knowknow is that nothing stays stuck on the page as it did in school. The real of life is that everything shifts like opinions, clouds, affections, every damn thing. There is no statis. There is no finite, not with people, not with nature, not with life. I’m not even sure there is finite in science, not that I know a scooby about science. The key is to be dynamic, adaptable, open to change. Such a truth and an infuriation.

I for one am rather tired of uplifting stuff. It’s as if pronouncing good things makes them happen. Which it doesn’t. I am definitely a woman of positivity but not because I am told to be. I am she because I have lived through shit and storm and loss and fight and I emerge as me. This is not a new emergency thing. I do it often. I don’t want to cause trouble, of course not, but at 73 I do feel the ‘ncy’ of emerging, like a professorial nudge in the back as if I need permission for this emergent-ness. I am so much a child of my time.

But what I have is the skinny thinks of my generation. I could and can finagle my way out of everything. We were buttoned up in scratchy pants and strapped into bodices. Our legs were covered, our eyes controlled, our hands and fingers gloved. Nonetheless we found our escapes. Life will out and those who thought they could ever control the life of another lost so much. Life is a wilding. Life is wild. Who you are is who you are.

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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.