On magic curtains and love

Written but not published in October:

A special someone has a magic curtain. He wrapped it around me so that I could change before we bathed in jellyfish-festooned waters. In the simplicity of that action I witnessed tenderness incarnate and a little part of my soul shimmered and is shimmering still, like the mother of pearl incandescence on the shells strewn by the sea, round about. 

Change is in the air. New moon, new pencil cases, new kings, disappearing queens. And other news, mostly hidden from sight by the abundant pageantry that surrounds us. Old leaves, starting to crumble,  whisk around me as I bicycle along a familiar route, into a new season. 

My career break must end. I have rested and reflected. Left my caravan; built my temple. I seek new shores.  

My Phoenix snores gently in some darkened recess, suspecting, I think, that I will stumble and fall. I sense that she raises one eyebrow at my efforts even as she sleeps. I tidy noisily around her, and thus we circle one another, in an awkward, semi-playful dance of wills.

I am gathering my energy and opening myself to possibility. Taking gentle, tentative steps. Aware that not everyone has this luxury. Aware that I want to make the best choices that I can, for myself. Ten months have passed so quickly. I am open to change.

On love (again), and crabs

I think maybe love is always there, if you are open to receiving it. Or maybe you feel it, embracing you with cream-cardiganned arms, and then you open your eyes and see it dancing around you; with you. 

I have felt so much cardigan love, of late:

A hoarder-stranger friend of a friend who invited me into her home and rifled through bags of clothes to find me a dress to wear to a wedding, after I put a call for help on Facebook. Another friend who bought me a dress at a charity shop just in case it would do the job. Another friend who turned book club into the most entertaining Sophie S anti-catwalk experience. (My Phoenix snatched away my impossible self-consciousness and flew with it, into the night sky.) 

Friends have helped my son find a work experience placement - and what a placement! - after a dear friend who would have hosted him, passed away. Another stranger used a portrait I had taken of that man, who I had loved, on the cover of his funeral order of service, knowing nothing about me other than that I’d taken the photo and believed I’d been significant in his life. 

Yet another stranger, who has become a friend, took me bathing in a monks’ well ahead of the solstice. 

A friend of a dear friend gave me her oestrogen patch at a party on Saturday when I’d forgotten my gel and was away for a few days. Saved me from a slide into hormonal fog.

These beautiful things embrace me. 

Midsummer has come and is passing. Bringing an alchemy of moments I did not hope for or expect. 

I usually mourn the moment that marks the gradual shortening of the days. But this year I feel so alive. My fingertips are humming. I feel the strength of my toes on my yoga mat. Yellow and orange waft in the air around and about me.

One of my ‘50 things to do when I’m fifty’ is ‘A crab’. My list is ambiguous; includes ‘A room with a view’, and ‘Build a temple’. I know the meaning behind the words will be revealed.

This morning, I lay on my back, feet strong on the floor, hands behind my shoulders, and moved into that shelled shape. It felt so good. Delicious. Bursting with abundance.

I sank back onto the floor and smiled. Then I rose to my feet, and saluted the raindrops falling from the sky that were cleaning my windows and my car, and watering my roses. 

On the ridiculous pointlessness of guilt

I have brought my mum and step-father to Kephalonia for a week. Specifically, to Assos, a tiny fishing village overlooked by a Venetian fort. Exquisite. I have come here three times before, by myself. During the precious May half-term week when, pre-pandemic, my Ex took the boys to Albania to visit family and I had some rare time to myself. 

This year, I decided to come a week earlier. Cheaper. Let him get the kids to school for a week. Let me have a week at home to myself while they’re away during half-term (fingers crossed - passport issues - another story), when I get back. My Ex has never had to get them to school, ever. I have covered pretty much every school day, every school holiday, every INSET day, every sick day. I have taken unpaid leave, additional unpaid holiday, part-time work. And every day they have gone to school with just about everything they needed. Needless to say, I left last Wednesday leaving a pile of clean school uniform, topped up lanyards, bus money, games kit etc etc etc. Some of you may sense where this is going. 

The topography of Kephalonia is not unlike Corfu or southern Albania. Not surprisingly - they’re all located on or near the Ionian Sea. Thanks to my step-father having the balls to drive on the right in extremely curvy conditions, I have seen more of Kephalonia on this visit than on previous visits. And the memories the landscape has inspired have left me reminiscing about so many hot days spent lying on rocks by blue waters. Laughing, sweating, eating watermelon and washing the juice off in the sea. Unfolding patterned tea towels with bread, cheese and a tomato for lunch. My Ex carrying an octopus home to his mum aloft a long stick, with tens of friends and relations in tow, like a bizarre snippet of AA Milne pageant. 

Being me, I am still working through the happiness, sadness and guilt these memories inspire. 

Out of the blue, yesterday, watching my step-father grind up to the island’s highest point in second gear, which took the best part of an hour, my executive coach crossed my mind. The distance of geography creates a mental space within which I like to consider where my life is ‘at’, and what my next steps might be. Which might be why I felt her presence. 

The alchemical mysteries of the universe had conspired to make her contact me at pretty much the same time I was thinking about her. An email, with a quote she thought I might like: ‘What do you think that love was for?’ Wow.

I don’t know. Really, I don’t know. It can’t have been just to have our kids. Surely? 

What I do know is, that it turns out the kids have both missed several days of school while I’ve been away. If I could bottle the hurt and anger I feel, at the calls and texts I’ve had from the boys, their dad, their school, in this precious piece of time and beach, I would. The untruths, the confusion, the hassle, his inability just to get his kids to their place of education on time and in one piece. 

This is why I left him. Why I ended that relationship. This is why the guilt I feel is so unnecessary. Perhaps, if nothing else, it took twenty years of that love and seven more on top, since, to work out that I don’t actually owe anyone, anything. 

So what next?

Lost for words

I know, right? For once.

Actually, I’ve said this before (here we go) and I’ll probably say it again: I really feel that the English language lacks words to describe the love that can remain when a marriage (or similar) ends. The love that comes from a really deep understanding and experience  of someone. The love that has your Ex knocking on the door with a body warmer, super-coincidentally on the very day you asked your friends via social media for the loan of a ski suit you could cycle to work in, because the weather has turned and you’re freezing. The love that means you argue because the other won’t take money from you, not because they won’t give it to you. The love that means you both know your Ex gets the fourth seat on the hypothetical life raft. 

The love that has me crying in the kitchen writing this, while my Ex helps reinstate the roof-to-ground drainpipe that high winds knocked off my house this week. The love that had me searching for tickets for him to get away with the kids to his homeland next month. I was trying to keep our lives separate, but now and then there are ways we can help one another that it is easier to accept than deny.

It wrings my heart. Despite the many things that made our relationship a living hell, I miss so many of the things we shared: the plans, the going on holiday, the budgeting and then spending what we’d saved on things we enjoyed. The shared pleasure we took in our kids. Our shared outrage at the horrors going on in the world. I miss his strength, his determination, his courage, his presence. He’s a good man with a good heart. 

We don’t talk of this stuff. He arrived with food for us all. I booked his holiday car rental, feeling awkward as we sat together at what was once our table. I didn’t eat the (possibly accidentally not a) veggie sausage roll he’d bought me until he’d left the room. I only wish I knew what he thinks about it all. But his actions tell me my feelings are mutual.

Of course this piece of current emotional leakage, that will have some of you raising your eyes to the ceiling, glosses over two critical words I used above. And I know where the ‘love’ we shared actually ended us. 

But just now I am feeling, like some kind of rugby ball landing heavily in my stomach (like I’ve ever gone near a rugby ball!), the full force of what I had and what I miss. And, despite my best efforts to push it away, the full force of the guilt I still feel at leaving him, and the pain it has left behind, takes my breath away. 

I’m not stuck. I’m ok. But I am still bound, to some extent, to someone I can’t help but still love. And maybe that is the word I seek.

The spiral of the knitted sock

I should have been writing more,  only I have been busy doing stuff like leaving my job, dealing with roof leaks and endless ducking DIY. Also, I was recovering a bit from the vortex experience and re-learning how to breathe. So - in my world - the usual. 

I had my last coaching session too, which was, as ever, super-productive. My coach said the whole vortex experience sounded to her a lot like a re-birth, and given the shit I’ve been letting go of, I liked that interpretation. She also flagged that a Phoenix needs to be re-born in order to rise again.

I should be writing that in titchy font to keep it hidden from prying eyes, except that my Phoenix has been making herself scarce again lately, so I suspect she was eavesdropping on that particular conversation and is giving me a wide berth. Interestingly (to me) my coach doesn’t know I write this blog. I told her, and we had quite a good natter about psychoanalysis, the subconscious, the conscious, and how I have personified (what’s the avian version of that?) the part of me I’m tussling around with. Hmmmm. 

We also established, for those of you who might give a fig, that I am no longer lying on the floor of my metaphorical (Jungian, transition vehicle, perhaps) gypsy caravan. Nope. I am now sitting out front, holding the reins, while my pony wanders along country lanes, dappled by leafy shadows and kissed by unstoppable sunbeams. (Note to self: I think I might invite my Phoenix to name the pony. Tho I think I already know it’s called Splash.) Anyway. I am Gently Exploring. 

I have also felt like crying quite a lot, as menopause symptoms have once again taken over my body, mind and soul, as only menopause symptoms can. This might be down to a clash of the titans: testosterone and oestrogen, that has left me feeling shaky (literally), panicky, and very emotional. I do hope I’m going to get the balance of chemicals right. It is so debilitating. And my kids keep asking if I’ve got dementia. (Tho I have pointed out that they’re the ones that need to be told fifty frigging thousand times to remember to turn the bathroom light off, and I have asked then to Google ‘gaslighting’).

Finally, I have, for my sins, made a return to the world of online dating. I have decided to keep the material I am gathering on this for the stand-up show/dramatic monologue I am going to write and perform in my fiftieth decade. It’s Frightful. (The dating; I haven’t started the monologue yet.) But I continue to live in hope of finding love. And not withering completely on the stem. In the meantime, if my Phoenix so much as mentions her egg, I might, accidentally on purpose, smash it. 

More soon. 

PS the sock! It’s about how, even tho you can feel all ‘here I am again’, actually, you are not (quite).

Pyramid vortex in orange

Ok, so this post title was for the hippies and designers among you. Readers (should there be any) who are not enthralled by my vivid astral dreamscapes, be warned as to the content of this post. 

I had a second ‘breath’ session last week, with the woman I met serendipitously in a sauna and who has been helping my youngest to relax and breathe. 

To cut a long story short, and to use a word that is not at all yogic, the way I breathe is Rubbish. We started out trying to get me to exhale through my nose for longer than my inhale, and I can’t. From here we discovered that I overuse my throat, do weird stuff with my abdomen (which is amazing since she told me I have almost no muscles there whatsoever) and when she tried to get me doing some diaphragm breathing I just couldn’t find the bloody thing at all. She asked if I often get out of breath (I do) and pointed out that I actually hold my breath when I speak (which explains some agonising public speaking experiences I have had). She said that years of not breathing correctly is affecting me at a cellular, emotional and physical level and can explain fatigue, anxiety, weight gain etc blah. 

Now, despite my known ability to latch onto some stuff with the innocence of a baby, this really does make sense to me. I’ve been drawn to yoga and mindfulness since taking some time out, and the suggestion that my breathing is the fundamental thing that I need to do differently - the keystone to it all if you like (and more on that shortly) - yep, I can buy that. It’s no wonder that my Phoenix so often keeps her distance when I’d like to feel her settling inside me.

I was given some homework: to lie very still (NOT MOVE) and breath gently through my nose, just observing, making no noise and not letting my shoulder/neck/tummy muscles start tightening. (Also to speak more slowly. Hmmm.)

Fast forward a few hours and I was doing my homework in bed and worrying about getting it wrong. And I have mentioned in previous posts that I have been waking in the night anyway, panicking at the (intentional) freefall I feel my life is in. In fact I was woken the other night by my youngest shaking me. In irritation, not concern. ‘Mum, you’re spazzing like a retard’. (He still gets into my bed, sometimes, during the night and if I’m honest, I don’t really mind. But it does bother me somewhat, that as a pescatarian, linguist and musician (ish) who is into spiritual stuff and yoga, and who has a CV that reveals my long-standing commitment to local and global issues, as well as a reasonable ability to string a sentence together, neither of my kids seem to have particularly well-tuned antenna in any of these departments.) My eventual point being: I already have stuff giving me reason not to sleep too well. 

I laid in bed trying to breathe gently. Trying not to panic. Trying to observe, not judge. Then I watched a couple more episodes of that thing on Netflix that is stealing my life away from me, on my iPad and, Bob’s my uncle (he is), I must have dropped off. 

I found myself in my hallway downstairs. It was dark. I felt concerned. I could hear the boys talking upstairs, in quiet voices. Like they were on the other side of something dividing us. I turned the light on and off. Nothing. Like a power cut on a cloudy night. No light whatsoever. 

I called for the boys. I could still hear their muffled chatter. I realised they were in the roof. They didn’t answer. I felt my way upstairs and couldn’t remember how to get to the attic space. I felt my way through my youngest’s room and opened the door to the old stairs up there. (New stairs have been put in to my loft conversion, and the old ones are now are storage space with a ceiling above them.) The insulation I used to suspend over the old stairwell was still there. I pushed my way through it, dusty, cobwebbed, hearing the boys get closer. To my horror, on the other side I met more darkness, exposed beams. More dust. Perhaps the ash of that burnt marriage certificate. My boys were up there, lost in the darkness. My loft wasn’t converted. I was rolling backwards in time. 

The hugest of screams started to rise in my throat as I propelled myself upwards using an invisible force. I soared to the keystone of a pyramid structure that was hovering over my home, through the dust and the muck. (Imagine some kind of incredible banshee lioness superwoman type who was probably also quite sexy. And don’t start googling whether pyramids have keystones.) I pulled flaming orange wings of energy over the pyramid that was over my home; pushed all the old shit away, gathered my boys (who were much younger than they are now) about me, and landed the house, and us, on track. Back in the present that is moving towards the future. 

Wow! You will understand why I woke with a thump in my bed, shaking and panting. In this nightmare of nightmares that brought so many latent fears under one metaphorical roof, I had OVERCOME. And there I was again, lying in my bed, trying to still my breath. 

I rolled over onto one side and focussed on the space in the centre of my back, behind my heart, where I can feel so tense and blocked and unloved. Quietly, oh so quietly, I started to breathe into it. And as I exhaled, through my nose (more or less), I asked it to soften. To let go. To feel warmth and love. And as I did this, I felt a breath of what I can only describe as new life, start to creep back into places where light hasn’t shone for such a long time. And there, in that foetal position, within the nest of my duvet, I slept.

***

This morning, after a night of strong winds and rain, two leaks in my converted loft space that I was about to start decorating, have appeared. Ffs. 

Let’s Fuck This Shit Up (I). And a dusky pink pinafore.

I thought I’d dip my toe into the water of these words. I have an occasional shiatsu (sounds like a small dog now that I’m writing it, hope I’ve got the right word?) session to support my well-being, and my most excellent practitioner lent me the phrase. It sounds better than, ‘Let’s try hard to change some deeply-engrained habits and live differently’. I’m probably going to come back to the full strength of it when my cylinders are replenished. And I think I’ve got a campaign in mind to attach it to. Watch this space. And by the way, it’s International Women’s Day in early March. 

I always thought of myself as the kind of person who embraces change. Then one day I observed the colossal wave of emotion that rose within me on finding someone else sitting in the seat I usually occupied in the office (those were the days!).  I went to hell and back when the email system at work changed to something in a BLUE colour. My point being that the truth is that I can find change pretty difficult to navigate. And accepting that there are things you might need to address does not make doing them differently any easier.

Of course I don’t mean having a sausage sandwich when you really fancy a fishfinger one, just to shake things up. I mean ‘differently’ as in, ‘no longer doing the things that may feel comfortable because they’re what you’ve always done, but are actually not that great for you/are downright harmful to you’. For example, choosing to step away from always taking responsibility for stuff, eg your sons’ dirty laundry stashed below their beds, even though it comes naturally to you. Throwing your to do lists to the wind. Stopping and being silent when your self-worth is built on what you describe as ‘goals’ that you move into a ‘done’ list. (For a while, at least.) Looking into a mirror and saying ‘I love you’, even though it makes your stated inability to run as far as a bus stop manifest as a marathon sprint to a sporting event you’re going to have to participate in. Easy, tiger.

Years ago, my dad had some feldenkraise sessions to help deal with a problem that meant the fourth finger on his left hand would, randomly, start doing the dance of life to its own beat. As a violinist, this was Not Good. I remember him telling me that his instructor had suggested he try and do things in a way that would be counter to his usual instinctive response, to get his synapses forging new connections. This included things like putting his left foot onto the bottom of a flight of stairs, rather than his right. Subtle interruptions to one’s routine. This idea really stayed with me - 30 years later I often change feet when approaching a staircase. (Weirdly, as long as they are made of stone and in big places like train stations or amphitheatres. No idea why.) 

I get this weekly feel-good email newsletter. I’ve lost count of the times the content has spoken to me in a way that would suggest that the universe is looking out for me (or that I’m well-tuned into my own echo chamber or something). Last week I opened one that had arrived back in December, and which shared a story about the time the author had stepped away from a well-paid job. Ha! And then I opened another, which was, guess what? -  about the art of doing things differently: try dressing up if you usually dress down! Wear jewellery even if it’s not your thing! Ok, so neither of these spoke to me, in as much that I almost never do either of those things but…. It gave me food for thought. Perhaps I could find a dashing suitor if I wore a gown to the ballet? And I guess there may be some merit in picking the sausage sandwich, after all.

Anyway. Let’s just say that in my own way, and in the spirit of gentle self-love (which sounds really wrong) I’M FU**ING THIS SHIT UP. (I deleted ‘trying to’, because I’m trying not to try.) 

In other news, It did not occur to me until after I had picked them, that my bathroom tiles and wall paint are not just the dusky pick colour of the corduroy pinafore dress with metal clasps that I had as a child. (I am drawn to relics of my childhood like a moth to a flame.) They are also vagina incarnate. And were glued to my wall yesterday. Change? Let’s hope they are an omen.