uncomfortable

We do what we do, what we can. We step out there every single day, sometimes with the underworld sludging our forward movement, all those doubts and obsolete plans and the damn chatter monkeys that always fill the spaces. But we keep going and that is a very big thing. Being human, we have a strong hold on the life force, even when we might consider letting go. Finding a reason to be cheerful can be a daily frantic search through the dusty dark corners of our capacious minds, but we keep looking anyway, because the alternative is a steady sink into a pit with no footholds, and in the middle of the biggest of Nowheres. Even those around who make out they never feel low, sad, unhappy, depressed, disconnected, doubting, hopeless or desperate, do, believe me. They, perhaps, just see any such admission as a sign of weakness, and, perhaps again, they have managed to build multiple layerings of protection atop any rise of darkness, until even they believe it doesn’t exist.

Although it is over four years since Himself took off to join his mummy and the angels, I have never really mourned for him, at least not in any messy breakdown sort of way, nor into uncontrollable tears that might have rendered my nose blocked, my head pounding and my face a strew map of a continent randomly divided. I don’t want him back, not as he became, anyway. If I miss him, I miss the way he could lift my spirits, comfort, encourage and support; the way, I think, that he showed his love, not being a romancer at heart; the impulsive Shall we go out tonight invitations. Walking just now in the sunshine (how wonderful to even write that word!) I feel a powerful rise of emotion, the roaring in my ears which once would have heralded tears, tears I haven’t been able to shed for many decades. As I bring his face onto centre stage, he is young again and grinning wide, his eyes bright. Do I miss you? I ask him, knowing that I don’t. What I miss is Love, pure and simple and yet not simple at all. I can feel love all around me, from my kids, my sibs, my friends, my fellow islanders, but that love is not the same as one between two people for whom the other is the only other; the only one you don’t mind being stuck with in any situation, like a tailback, a broken down lift, outside a ‘sorry, no tickets left’ venue, anywhere, everywhere. There is always another option because the most important element in any situation is being with that other person, not the stuff around it. What a rare and beautiful thing, and one I realised, saw super clear just now, on a walk I didn’t complete.

So, I am open and honest about feeling deeply sad for myself, for my loneliness, full of self-doubts and confusion in my go-for-it navigation of a world I never wanted to inhabit. As I bounce out there like Tigger every single damn day, grinning, thankful, uplifting others, making friends, cracking jokes, it is my truth because this attitude is a daily choice, not a lucky-for-her gift from birth. Most days, really most of them, I believe in this attitude, and then comes a day when I want to cry me an ocean, never mind a river; when I just want to hide away, to not be seen by anyone, to disappear completely. I know, for sure, that everyone has such days, but that is not my point. To be honest about it, particularly to oneself, is to fully embrace the holistic human state instead of pretending everything is tickety boo all of the time. We all are the drivers in our own lives, and nobody wants to slop around in a cloak of gloom and misery, but it is exhausting to stiff-upper-lip (whatever that means) all of the time. And, it isn’t reality, and I honestly believe that good people who are doing their very best to live life to the full might stop judging themselves so harshly. Accepting down days, admitting loneliness, self-doubt and so on, isn’t comfortable, but it is real and honest and normal and understandable.

Social media is uplifting twaddle a lot of the time, although I have uplifting quotes stuck to the walls of my kitchen, and they do help. The hourly news are about as ghastly as can be. Some days feel just as ghastly. Our culture is all based on couples. Two steaks, two tickets, two, two, two. One to hold the front end, the other, the back; one to check this, the other to check that; one to joke, the other to laugh; come for supper invitations are usually for two, adventures are shared and somehow a tad pointless alone. Going out is always uncomfortable at first as an unwilling single. Do I look ok, is this the right wine, should I mention this, how can we (we) avoid that, or him or her? Somewhere in between, we live on my lonely friends, doing our best, falling, rising, laughing, crying and then doing it all again, over and over again until the wind changes and our candle gutters to the wick, once and for all.

See you there. It’s guaranteed I’ll make you laugh.

The Sadness has come to visit. I’ve felt it all week long. At first, I berate myself, tell myself that my inner talk needs a thwack on the butt and a strong invitation to leave. But that doesn’t work. I busy myself with small chores, checking them off my check list, as if I was an early wife with no clue what to do next. But the small chores do not fill the aching black hole, nor do they last very long. I am efficient in my tasking skills and they are all completed by 10am. Good lord, now what? I watch my hands as they thread wool onto a needle, my fingers gnarled as old oak limbs but still they know their way. I rise from my sewing chair and walk through to the kitchen. I could cook something but don’t want to; I could change the sheets but I just did that; I could sweep the floor of pepper brown larch needles that come in without invitation and all the Autumn time. I could. I could. But with the Sadness heavy on my shoulders, as if I was carrying boulders in a rucksack, I am bent down, weary of the weight.

So, what to do? I ask this out loud and rather aggressively into a nothing space, empty and somehow consuming. The Sadness says not one word. Okay, I rise, swing around and face the nothing that is definitely Something. What do you say I should do? Standing there, uncomfortable and weighed down, I feel foolish and it’s not because I am talking to nothing. I smell the metal air and notice the lack of geranium fragrance within the sunroom. I swing round to them. Where did you go? I ask the salmon pink blooms, still salmon pink blooming even now. They just look at me and continue blooming. I do not know what to do with this Sadness, I confess. Just keep going, comes to mind and those are wise words indeed. Be thankful for everything. What? I interrupt rudely. Everything? Even the Sadness?

Well, yes, even the Sadness, because if you keep batting it away when it comes, it will just come back again. In fact it will come back again whatever fixing you fix, whatever you do because you are grieving and there is no end to that state of being. Just think, the voice goes on, is there ever a way to rub out a life, to pretend, now that life is gone, you can just forget all shared history? Oh, well, no, maybe not. I sit with a cup of tea and try not to think because thinking is just white noise in my head, no, not white noise, not ambient, but sharp needles of thought, of memories, switched and twitched and foundering on the rocks of my Now, my silent now, my empty now. Metallica sort of thoughts. I shake my head to clear it but that doesn’t clear my heart and as my head comes back to base, the thoughts scurry back in like ants when level re-levels. All week my wee dog has noticed. She follows me everywhere, looking up, those chestnut eyes wide and questioning. Her normal distant behaviour has changed. She comes to bed when I do and watches me from the floor until I flip the light. I can’t explain her intelligence but I am glad of it, nonetheless.

I walk out, me and the watching dog, in between rain showers, a short one today, too tired with all those boulders on my back. Then I shower and change my frocks. Now, this is a weird one. Showering, for me, symbolises change, as does the frock thing. It betters me, sloughing off old skin, old thoughts, old grief, old frocks. I come home to a warm fire and a darkling sky. I watch the garden fade into night and find a new sense of peace. I am accepting the Sadness. Sit down with me, I say. Welcome. I lay down the boulders and they turn to dust. I decide to let it be, whatever it and be means. I don’t need to understand, nor explain. This evening I think. There are those who just watched their loved one die. I look back up the track I have already walked, knowing they are out there right now, at the beginning. And, although I am thankful I am further into the wilderness, I can turn around to see them coming and I can smile and lift some light, saying Keep Going my friend. Keep Going.