So I haven’t posted for a few weeks. Life got too difficult and I couldn’t do anything other than work and exist for a while. Even then, I took some leave and TOIL (time owed in lieu) to try and get back on track.
The best thing that I did during that time was to go and stay at the beach for a weekend. With the dog. I hadn’t realised how difficult it is at times to be in our home without the our.
People ask me why I don’t sell the house and move, but I love our/my home. I love the peace and the sounds of the birds. And I love the sunsets. The beach had stunningly beautiful sunsets that the dog and I watched whilst trying to stay warm. He ended up zipped into my jacket, warming both of us. Photo is above.
He watched the kangaroo on the beach and I watched the sunset slowly. On another beach later in the week, I stood with a friend watching a storm roll in. Unusual amounts of lighting lit up the sky and the ocean. It was spectacularly beautiful.
Once the storm got to close we got back in the car and headed for ice-cream. The night feeling like an overly positive metaphor for my life. Because we don’t escape the storm, it crushes us and then we stumble around trying to get up and move forward.
On yet another night I was gifted the healing power of so much laughter. I had forgot how a group of friends can heal each other’s hurts so casually.
My tragedy has been forgotten by many as life moves on. This is not a criticism, I am glad that life moves on or else the world would be mired in grief. I think I had forgotten how fragile my emotions could be. Tipped over the edge by a song being played at the end of yoga class.
I cried and I cried and I cried some more. My closest friends held my heart down the phone and over cyber space. Days later the longest biggest hug from a friend devastated that I had been in so much pain and not called.
“I didn’t want to bother you” was my honest answer. By why do I, and indeed many of us, feel that asking for support when we are at our most vulnerable is a bother. Because it isn’t and it hurts those that we keep at a distance in this way. All we do is increase our pain and theirs.
A friend said I am just lost at the moment and that being lost is ok. It isn’t comfortable and it isn’t good but perhaps the path that I find will be filled with purpose and meaning and moments of joy.
Many people are lost in life, many people have much harder lives and deeper sorrows than I. That doesn’t make mine easier but it does help to have perspective. Life goes on and I have a choice to engage with it or not. To reach out or not.
My choice is to live, not just to exist and to reach out whenever I need to, in order to fully engage with life. Fully engaging means experiencing the whole range of emotions, those that are comfortable and those that aren’t.
It is ok to be uncomfortable because at some point I will become comfortable with the uncomfortable. Please check in on the people you love, let them know you love them on their bad days as well as their good. Show them that you want to be there for them even if they don’t want to be a bother.