This morning John got up before me and fed the cats and lit the fire and made me a cup of tea, having first gone outside into the engine room to get another box of cat food,* and to the store bin outside to get kindling whilst I dozed in bed. As well as our new-to-us sofa- which even reclines!- we have at last bought a comfortable mattress, having been using a futon mattress ever since we moved onto the boat. After a year of the mattresses of low-budget accommodation of India and Southeast Asia it actually felt comfortable but over recent weeks it has become unbearable. This one is a Silentnight with integral topper, firm yet comfortable, and only slightly hangs off the edge- its 4’ a small double but too thick to fit under the lip in the wall like the futon did, bought from Gumtree for £50, second hand but apparently new. John says this might give him a few more good years!
I got up and we wrote out Christmas cards- just a few to elderly relatives and the kids- and walked to the village shop to post them. John filled up the water while I washed the dishes using the ‘emergency’ five litre bottle we keep in the kitchen. Then he went to work for a late shift- 2pm-10pm- and I did the washing in the twin tub and lit the fire, and settled down to write this. My plan for the rest of the afternoon/evening is to eat Marmite on toast, watch Ashes to Ashes (Season 2-3), eat stollen, perhaps cook something,** and watch more Ashes to Ashes.
I’ve been working hard on reaching an accommodation and acceptance of my current circumstances- I know this is ridiculous, since I live a life that so many people would dream of, but it’s part of my makeup to be striving, pushing; pushing against my natural state of melancholy. Looking to the future and the next big thing, or hoping that one day it will all work out. I’ll get a publishing deal, come into money when all along my life is as it is and I’m missing the moment. Being so focussed on creativity can be just another way to push away the present moment rather than accepting it and then hopefully enjoying its richness. Also from a practical point of view I get a lot of RSI so it’s really good for me to have a typing break when I can.
So I guess this is a kind of gratitude list: my husband John, my anchor and my guide.
There’s so much to be grateful for in terms of us sharing the same outlook that I forget that so many people can’t even find (as they are so rare) a vegan boyfriend or husband. I wouldn’t dream of being with someone who wasn’t vegan, and bearing in mind we only know about three vegans I’d probably be lonely. Above all, I am consistently accepted for and as myself, with absolutely no expectation or pressure to be anything but, even though I’m always changing.
My job/financial circumstances. I qualified as an occupational therapist in 2000, naturally rising up to become Head Occupational Therapist at a secure service from October 2010- February 2018. That job was so involved and me being me that by the end I was pretty burned out. We went travelling March 2018- March 2019. March 2019-July 2019 back in the UK and in a state of shock and finding it hard to imagine ever working again. July 2019 we both started working as Bank (meaning you can pick and choose when to work) Health Care Workers. December 2019 I stopped, feeling the work was too physically demanding. I went to India December 2019- February 2020.
On return I took a deep breath and signed up to an agency to get Occupational Therapy work, which involved making an introductory video interview and going for mandatory training. A job would have probably involved full time work and up to an hour’s commute each way. The night before the training I said out loud, ‘I don’t want to do it, somebody please save me!’ An email from the occupational therapist at the place where I’d done the healthcare job came through saying there’s a three day a week occupational therapy job if you are interested. Although it’s a bit out of my comfort zone as it’s not the clinical area that I’m really confident in, it is fifteen minutes up the road, the people are all really nice, and working at a lower level and only three days means I have enough time and energy to try and build an alternative career- ghostwriting and editing via Upwork and of course editing and pitching my own book.
Agency work, either full time or at a higher level, or both, is still an option, and might be a good idea at some point- we could be here in the UK earning as much money as possible for six months, and in Italy/India/Phnom Penh for the other six months. But for now, whilst we 1. Can’t go anywhere and 2. I want to try and build an alternative career, this is ideal. If I did a job like I did before, with a commute, all my energy would be taken with that. Plus I am a real homebody, and rather lazy, and enjoy nothing more than sleeping in and hanging about on the boat with the cats and the swans.
I’m getting the Corona vaccine tomorrow – as a worker in a care home I am in the first batch, everyone at my work got a link sent to us through which we can book in at the local hospital. So that’s our fun activity for our date day- Fridays are the day John and I always have off together. In January we’re getting eyetests! (not been done since just before we went travelling- I still have my reading glasses and their bright pink/orange case which went everywhere and never got lost, its catch long broken but held closed with a hair elastic…) And I’ve got a £25 M&S voucher from work as a Christmas present as well so I could also go and spend that on yummy Christmas food. Or perhaps a dressing gown. I’m not being sarcastic when I say that truly, my cup runneth over.***
Modest/tentative plans for next year
Focus on eBay and selling the India stuff we bought in Pushkar- a narrowboat really isn’t big enough for a business involving stock!
Go to Italy to check out property- still thinking about it
Go off for a week on the boat- we have people’s dream holiday beneath our feet yet don’t really use it
Phnom Penh, Cambodia and/or India, are still hoped for for winter ‘21-‘22 but of course who knows?
Go cold turkey on Waitrose Essential Mince Pies and Aldi Holly Lane Marzipan Stollen (both #accidentallyvegan) I haven’t had a drink since August but I have bought Vegan Baileys (from Waitrose), Champagne (from Aldi), Gin and Tonic ready mixed in cans (from Aldi) and Fosters lager for Christmas Day and Boxing Day so will be probably ceasing all that in January too
*The cats have decided that the only food they really like is one particular flavour only of Morrison’s own brand, which involves a special trip to Northampton a half hour away.
**I never did, I just had a bowl of muesli
*** I’d nearly finished when a knocking/tapping sound on the window alerted me to the swans outside wanting food. I rest my case.
Sending you all warmest wishes and lots of love
Thank you for being here
Rachel
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Me, crap photos but real everyday life: thisisrachelhill
John, good photos of boat life and our travels: travelswithanthony
Named after the really great book by Stephen King On Writing (I can’t actually read any of his books because I don’t like reading anything scary, but I love this book about the writing process.
The last time my mood got really low was during a period of stress at work, a minor distance from my husband, and loneliness in my female friendships. On top of that, I had stopped writing. At the time, I didn’t care, I didn’t even put it down as a hobby when I filled out an application form. Instead I put singing!* I spent the day alone watching Boyhood(real time film about families and growing up that shows just how fast it all goes). It showed the good bits and the mistakes and got me thinking of all the things I could have done differently. I called a few friends, they were all busy or unavailable. I panicked: should I go back to counselling? Was I depressed? Or was I, as I suddenly realised, just a writer who had stopped writing? My fingers tingled, and I began to write…
*I moved and had to find a new yoga class. The yoga teacher introduced me to someone who lived in my new town. That person invited me to join a pop up singing group. I was blissed out after yoga and agreed. I thought maybe it was about me getting rid of my inhibitions. It did do that, but it led onto something much more important. The singing group woman also invited me to a book club and gave me the names of the two books they were reading. I went to the library, it was closed, I went to the book shop, it only had one of the two books in- Orlando. I made my excuses about the book club but I read Orlando. It was better, much better for me than the singing; seeming to unlock my writing, focus and structure, and if I had to pay my dues in advance by wearing a silly hat and singing out of tune in public then it was a fair price.
The fact that I got so low over a film shows how fragile my state of being was and how sensitive I was that a film could put me in that place, and how this new found neutrality is quite literally a life saver, that now I can run over a baby rabbit on the way to work and barely give it a second thought.**
**If you are like I was, and find even reading that upsetting, let me ease you by saying: It ran out in front of me as I was driving along a main road, hurtling across the middle. I put on my brakes- I didn’t slam them, but nor did I check in my rear view mirror either, so that evens out the me-rabbit balance, but I felt it go under the front driver wheel. I wondered afterwards, would it have been better not to have braked? If I had been going slightly faster, would I have gone past it, or at least would the front wheels have gone past it? An old boyfriend of mine told me that animals have better instincts than us and it is best not to brake as they will have judged it. So are all the dead animals and birds at the side of the roads not as I always thought, due to people driving too fast, or animals and birds walking, running or flying unavoidably out in front of you, but are actually the result of caring drivers slamming on their brakes? Probably not. I think he was mainly referring to deer, as he had hit one a few years previously, driving through Thetford Forest. It had run out, no way to stop it. He said they made eye contact as it hit the windscreen. That was my Vietnam, he used to say. I don’t know if baby rabbits are as capable as grown deer of judging speeds and distances of traffic on main roads. Apparently they don’t even know what to eat, they just eat anything and everything and it’s just luck or trial and error if they survive. So it’s not that I didn’t give running over a baby rabbit a second thought, it’s just that I decided not to get upset about it.
WARNING This post discusses a period where I experienced suicidal urges, thoughts and feelings. It explores suicidal ‘logic’ and mentions thinking about methods.
I’m now okay now, these feelings come and go over the years, I keep myself safe and it passes.
The day of the beach walk, when we walked to the Incense Tower the wrong way… I wanted to stand and look. Anthony walked off, thinking I wanted to be alone. Being left behind is a trigger for me. A misunderstanding; over sensitivity, a bad atmosphere, the atmosphere between us deteriorated and my mood plummeted.
Thinking, ‘It would have been better if I hadn’t woken up.’ Thinking about the past, imagining going back and preventing things with my son turning out as they did. Thinking, ‘Better to be an asleep person, who could take pride in having had a successful family.’ Decisions, my responsibility. But what did I actually do that was so bad?
And on and on, thoughts spiralling down and down. ‘I left my children for you.’ Anthony said to me once. Oh God, and I’d painted myself as so good, getting their room ready, buying things, cooking. It wasn’t only my kid I messed up. Lots do it, women break up families, but they’d already been separated for years. But he did move to me not vice versa.
The ultimate destination of these thoughts for me is suicide. So many reasons to die: As a punishment. As a I don’t know how to live with myself. As a solution to every other worry or concern. To take responsibility. All I do is harm. I do no good. My son is doing well without me. Wow, the matrix/me really did a number on me. Such dangerous thoughts: If he’s done this well when I stepped back, and done even better when I went away for a year, then how much better would he do if I wasn’t here at all?
I remembered in Kerala, Sea Win, lying on the floor. Me: ‘Why do I feel so bad?’ The answer seemed to come from the light above me: ‘It’s your programming.’
It’s the mother of all battles undoing this. Do I want to? Or do I want to die? All this talk between us re The Future and getting older; who am I kidding? One day I’m going to kill myself and this is why. I’ve not yet got the method planned. Maybe I haven’t reached the end of my tether yet. Maybe I don’t want to enough. Maybe when I do, I will.
Walking along the beach, going into late afternoon, grey light, me thinking of methods of committing suicide, thinking about drowning myself, getting up early or coming back late.
On the sand there were big chunks of mosaic. I remembered there was mosaic on the stairs at the hotel too. (mosaic is kind of a thing for me). A grey bicycle was chained up on top of a ridge of sand so that its background was the cloudy sunset sky. Then, a shiny apple lying on the sand with only a few bites out. Then, some beautiful driftwood. Then a sparrow pecking at a discarded corn on the cob on the sand. Another sparrow, another corn on the cob. A light koru, the Maori symbol of new life. ‘It’s no good showing me all that,’ (good stuff I’d usually like, things of beauty I’d normally connect with) I said grimly, in my head. But then I realised, ‘All that stuff is always there.’
An old Vietnamese lady walked past selling buns, bags of tiny sponge cakes. She smiled and was friendly. I smiled at her, was friendly, and bought some. I felt bad about being so sad, as if she could catch it.
On the beach, mountains one side on a spit, partly concealed by high rise blocks of hotels ranged in front of the mountains, the juxtaposition was shocking.
In Kerala at the beach cafe, at the place where we’d been in a film, I’d read a tatty newspaper pull out/magazine. In it there’d been an article by a food/travel writer. In the wake of two recent celebrity suicides he’d written about how he’d travelled to all these amazing countries, stayed in great hotels and eaten all this wonderful food, that was his job, but at that the same time, ‘For two years I wanted to die,’ he said. I thought it would have been better if he’d written about that too. Like the social media thing of people tending to only put up the good stuff. ‘No one posts photos of themselves sobbing on Facebook.’ I often say. I know there are sites of self harm etc, but are they another extreme, all bad, would it be healthier if we all put everything, or at least a balance, out there?
Once awake, awake. ‘Enlightenment’ is accepting all of it, somehow, and somehow making peace with it.
As Anthony and I have discussed previously, being conscious doesn’t mean you’re nice. Some heads of big businesses that destroy the environment and people’s health for money to fuel their pleasure lifestyle may well be conscious. They may have decided it’s all an illusion so just do what you want it doesn’t matter. But like I’ve said before, even if it is only a game, I will still recycle, I still won’t hurt animals. And being conscious definitely doesn’t mean its fun. Sometimes you’ll wish you were still asleep.
But I made all the mistakes before. Before I woke up, whilst I was still asleep. So was that all my script? My back story like in Blade Runner to make me less likely to wake up? In Blade Runner they gave the robots memories, even a family, ‘To make them easier to control.’ Or if we don’t believe in some malignant power, that it just made it more of a challenge for me to wake up. Like George Harrison Isn’t it a pity. Or some people say the sadness triggers you waking up; the cracks let the light in, etc. And Now provides the chance to go off script and deprogramme myself, should I choose.
Back in the room, thinking about how just a short time of silence and awkward atmosphere will plummet my mood. One to two hours of it and I’m at suicide methods and my mind is dangerously out of control. ‘No,’ I said to myself, ‘I may not be in control of my thoughts but I can control my actions.’ I hugged myself and thought of the suicide prevention workbook (that I wrote!) ‘Curl up into a ball, you can’t hurt yourself then.’
In bed something in the room screamed method: the curtain pole. Compared to Dong Hoi, where I had admired the curtain pole’s glittery beauty, here, the pole was a suicide option. I was scared of it. Would I just do it, like I slapped myself the other day, involuntarily? That night, so depressed… ‘Just get through the night,’ I said to myself.
Later, talking myself out of it… You think committing suicide will wipe out (or atone for) all the bad you did; but of course it doesn’t, and actually makes it worse. It’s another bad thing. A really terrible thing. It ADDS to the sum of the harm you’ve done. If you were to ask them if that’s what they wanted, of course they wouldn’t say they wanted that. But of course even to ask would be an awful thing to do… The ‘logic’ of a suicidal mood state can be terrifyingly dangerous. In the past I’ve even thought people would WANT me to do it and agree with me that it made sense and that it was a good idea if I were to ask them. One particular time, after a particularly awful Mother’s Day, when my son had stolen something and run up a one hundred pound phone bill, I decided to go to bed, sleep on it, and if I still felt definitely that it was, I’d run it by my friend M, ask her if she thought it made sense, and if she did, I’d do it. Of course I woke up and thought there’s no way she would, and crisis averted.
That night in Nha Trang, I woke later, realised it was no threat- the method I’d been scared of, the curtain pole. And the next morning, I saw that the curtain pole had a screw loose, it wouldn’t have held, it was not dangerous, and me, feeling better, noticed glitter on my leg which reminded me to include the nice Dong Hoi curtain pole in the story.
Nha Trang abounded with patterns and metaphors, the trapped huge variety of beautiful/fascinating animals dead/alive; the non communication, we spoke to other people only twice. The longing to connect… I wished we could all speak the same language or that I knew another language but to really connect you’d need to be absolutely fluent and how long would that take and which language to choose… And how few people I can absolutely connect with even in our first language… Even Anthony and I lost each other for a while…
*One day halfway down our street, on the other side to our hotel, I passed a young Vietnamese woman wearing a red t shirt. Printed on the t shirt, over her heart area, were the words, ‘It’s broken here.’
Thank you very much for reading
I found that my mood dipped as I was writing this chapter. I found this song helped:
Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else. With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.
I can so clearly remember that period of work related trips, seeing the beauty in an Enfield Business park, there was even a sign saying Electric Avenue, and driving to Sussex, negotiating tunnels and toll roads and the sense of achievement it gave me.
Feeling suicidal now and again was almost a habit, maybe brought on by PMS, overwork, or perhaps a deeper awareness that my life wasn’t quite right somehow. I’m much better now.
My spiritual awakening was triggered by meeting and falling in lovewith my now husband, we used to spend hours talking on the phone.
WHAT MY ANGEL SEES (First published October 2014)
I used to wrap my arms around you all the time so I know how your husband feels when he folds you into his arms. You could never feel me holding you but you can feel him. Seeing that makes me so happy.
I watched you hurt yourself, not feed yourself properly, be careless and stubbornly ignore all my signs and advice. Just like you watching your son when he was younger; so you see I know how much it hurt.
I introduced you to potential teachers and to sensible people who might have been helpful or supportive but you would only listen to people in black jeans with spiky hair. So set in your beliefs that you were flaky and incapable that you acted it out and made it true: getting up late, being disorganised and letting people walk all over you.
Watching you suffer, all alone. I suffered, feeling the moments when you felt incapable. Other times I wanted to yell. I think once I actually knocked a cup over.
I tried to get you to be spiritual. Angels hummed around you. You’d find it in music sometimes, but you drank too much and it dulled your senses. Maybe you’d have been better off getting into raves and ecstasy (not that I am allowed to prescribe that kind of thing), but you hated the orange and yellow clothes and so you stayed miserable in black.
There were dark moments but I always had faith in you. But oh, you were stubborn! I used to throw snowballs, shatter sunbeams before your eyes, line up twenty cats along a road for you to say hello to… But you were blind and gradually it all cemented over until all I could do was watch; I couldn’t even try to communicate with you anymore.
And so when it finally happened, when the cement was scraped away and the well lid was forced open… it was like witnessing a miracle- and I’m used to them. To watch you sitting cross legged on the floor, phone in one hand, the other hand clutching your chest, feeling like your chest was being cracked open with an axe, love and light flooding in… I will never forget that.
So when I hear you thinking about hanging yourself, alarm bells ring loudly. Of course, I send Love blazing down to you but it needs more. The best treatment is to give you something to do that is a bit scary and challenging, quite safe but enough to cause a little nervousness and get you into a minor flap. Something work related; you are so conscientious that you’d never not do it. So, it distracts you, gives you something to worry about like the M25 and the Dartford Bridge and afterwards it resets your mood and emotional state and we all breathe a sigh of relief.
The reason you have to ask angels to help you is not because we are meanly sticking to some kind of protocol; it’s because by asking you open a channel, it is closed otherwise and we cannot help. Even the ‘Oh God, help me’ in the toilet bowl we respond to but alcohol clouds consciousness and most people don’t remember or keep the channel open.
When an angel’s person commits suicide, it’s the hardest thing. If that person does not ask for help the channel is closed and although we are showing signs and sending messages all the time, if the person doesn’t believe anyone is thinking of them or that there is any help to be had, their angel’s wings are tied. I’ve seen angels whose people have killed themselves tear themselves apart.
You’re so easy really, nowadays. Rewarding. A little challenge and the sense of achievement you get is out of all proportion to the challenge itself; wide eyed you wander around a business park in Enfield as if it’s Wonderland. So happy, so full of optimism, noticing red berries on a bush, finding a pond, seeing a beautiful sunset and then sorting out your entire life over a Premier Inn dinner for one. You’re so easy now, it makes all the past worthwhile.
Yes to everything: ThailandPart Two (very rough draft chapter for book)
I’d even thought of saying to M about the anthem (in Thailand they play the national anthem in public places and everyone stands up), and certainly I’d vowed to be more aware of my surroundings… But lost in conversation with M I didn’t notice the anthem and everyone standing up. M and I were at a cafe upstairs, my husband had gone downstairs to find a shop, he said he could see us just chatting away, totally oblivious.
I dragged myself away from the feeling of burning shame, it was an accident, I was totally absorbed in conversation. I decided to let myself off, we were at train station with backpacks, we would have looked like we’d just arrived and didn’t know. I was actually looking at language learning with M, trying to do my best to be a good tourist! I do have to focus on things, I struggle to read a menu whilst someone is talking to me, or to talk and pay attention to directions. I can be engaged in conversation and completely oblivious to what’s going on around me. Good for the person and the conversation, can cause occasional glitches, like this one.
As well as panic buying snacks from the 7/11 for the journey, packets of crisps, pastries and something chocolatey called Euro Rolls, we went to eat a meal before getting on the train. In the restaurant we met a young British man, he said of Thailand, ‘It feels safe; I didn’t think I would but I do.’
Is this how I felt in India? But then to come to Thailand and realise that maybe I didn’t? Or is it just that Thailand provides such an elevated level of comfort? Was this our reward for five months of India? And for thinking India was fine, which it was, but Thailand, oh my God I felt so safe, so easy, so at ease…
It’s like its all laid on for tourists. They even make the beds for you on the train. The seats are soft anyway and then they put a mattress on top and then they put the sheet on. There’s a lovely blanket in a bag, white with square raised bits, like a towel but soft, warm to the touch, it holds the warmth of your body and is big enough to really wrap yourself in and cover your feet right up.
The upper beds are a bit smaller, but the lower ones are almost big enough for two. So cosy, plenty of space, and there was even three little mini metal pegs that fold out from the wall to hang your stuff on.
The train was full of Westerners and we met a nice Irish man who was travelling with his wife and young son. A lovely friendly woman member of staff taught us Thai and took our orders for breakfast.
As usual I was too excited to sleep, and sat up writing in my little cubicle long after M and my husband had gone to sleep.
The train arrived early the next morning, and after a coach, a ferry and a taxi, we arrived in Haad Rin, Koh Phangan.
There were lots of healthy looking dogs of all different breeds, medium-small, fluffy, Golden Retriever types, but many with a ridge, even small fluffy dogs that were not like Ridgebacks at all. We saw a woman on a white bicycle with two dogs balanced on her lap/the handlebars, and two dogs in metal crate like side car. Dogs sat on the top of the two tier round white tables that were often outside shops.
We saw what looked to us like a giant cat stretched out long and fluffy on a table. We saw a woman entering a shop, pick up cat, squeeze it to her and kiss it, she did this three times. Where we were staying we saw cats held like babies, being carried back to staff’s room, ‘My cat.’ One sturdy, whiteish, one orange with bright eyes, one Siamese with a collar with a plastic bow and a name tag; all well fed and healthy. The orange cat visited us for an hour while we played cards and was fed banana cake left over from the train, all we had. At night we often heard the meowing and fighting of the various cats.
Most of the staff were from Myanmar/Burma, we should have learned Burmese not Thai. One of the staff sounded like a cockney. ‘I copy Danny Dyer, he’s my favourite actor,’ he said, and he and my husband discussed Danny Dyer films. One of the staff showed me their tattoo, ‘It means freedom, I used not to have freedom, but now I do.’ We played pool with one of the Burmese reps, he coached me and M.
We went to the party beach: little plastic buckets of alcohol and mixers with straws, loads of handwritten signs on neon card saying f***ing and c***. Is that what we sound like? We went to the Cactus Bar: a group of Burmese men and boys did amazing fire club displays, twirling, throwing them to each other, they were really good. The trees nearby were covered in lights flowing down, and when we went for a walk on the beach it all looked very nice. There were people doing UV body painting, sitting in the sand in front of big colourfully decorated screens. Beach sellers came round with fake flower garlands, light up ears, inexplicable toy monkeys in bright neon colours, and even more mysterious, Connect 4. All the bar staff were from Burma, our barman showed us pictures of his girlfriend who was from Belgium. The music was a mix of ‘inappropriate given there were little kids present;’ good; and cheesy- they played YMCA in the middle of it all. An old black dog wandered about the dance floor. The staff organised balloon games and a terrifying looking but actually okay game of fire limbo with the little kids. We had cocktails, the menu making a pretty list, Mai Tai and Butterfly and Black Russian; Sex on the Beach and Tequila Sunrise.
Waiting for 2am, our agreed time, feeling tired… At the table next to me, a woman’s foot, no nail polish, half buried in the sand. The sand so soft it felt unreal, as if shipped in, but couldn’t be, the beach is so big. Seeing my blue ring, like the room in Chennai, thinking, ‘Every moment on earth is a blessing,’ simultaneously noticing a light out at sea, one of the boats, ‘Every moment you’re alive is a blessing.’ Lots of lights but I picked just one.
There was a swimming pool where we were staying but it was often busy. We found a swimming pool further along the beach, up some steps, part of a restaurant and rooms resort that was practically empty. We ate at the restaurant and asked if we could use the pool, which was usually deserted.
Walking along the beach to the pool, monsoon clouds, the sea all different colours, green, dark blue, pale blue in patches. The beach was full of driftwood, one piece was big, worn pale, with lots of branches, beautiful. There were piles of small pieces of darker driftwood, gathered ready to burn. Lots of broken glass including terrifying broken bottles, jagged ends up, and old coconuts, dark brown coconut leaves huge like branches, and plastic bottles.
The swimming pool below the restaurant was surrounded by fake boulders, and the complex was done out like a fake temple. Grey fake stone doors led to toilets outside near the pool. There was a sink outside, in the open air. The water came out of the tap warm; there was always one or two white blossoms in the sink and standing there you looked down at the beach and the sea. There was an outside shower with a faux stone mermaid; I used to always think someone was standing there as I swam.
The three of us went swimming together, practicing strokes, doing tricks and just enjoying the water totally unselfconsciously. Family at its best are people you can just be yourself with, and be forgiven.
What do you do when everyone else is drinking cocktails, you ordered iced coffee cos you have a blog to write? Take a sip. When they can’t drink theirs and offer to you, even though you ordered iced coffee cos you have a blog to write? Take a bit more than a sip, even though don’t really want to, but don’t finish them. (Like the potion!) Return to room when all back, start blog, and keep writing until it’s the end, after everyone else asleep…
Lying on my back after yoga. ‘Why do I feel so bad about everything?’ White light above me. ‘It’s your programming.’
Tired after working hard on blog and posting it. Took a walk break by myself, to decompress, relax my body before sitting, and socialising, at dinner. On the beach. ‘Enjoying yourself can be its own religion.’ I thought of my husband. Day off tomorrow. I got back to room, my husband was listening to this song on YouTube, ‘Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think; Enjoy yourself,while you’re still in the pink; Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think!’
I thought I’d try, maybe get a short skirt and a top, or a dress, to wear in Thailand at least. The man in the shop didn’t seem all that friendly, and then when I picked something up and asked to try it on he shook his head and said no, meaning that it wouldn’t fit. I picked up a couple of other items. How about this? How about this? No, no, he said half laughing. It didn’t even seem like he would even let me try anything on, so I left. Okay, I thought, this is one of those not so nice experiences, but let’s not make it worse than it is.
On the way back there was an, albeit more expensive shop, with a friendly Burmese shop assistant and a European manager. I had a brief look and then said, have you got stuff to fit me, and told her what had happened, oh no, that’s mean, no, we have European sizes, come tomorrow. I couldn’t face doing anything more that day.
Just before my husband left to take my step daughter back, we were having last minute anxieties about our booking choices, as we had a friend from the UK coming out after my step daughter went home and we wanted to make sure where we were staying was suitable as well as not too expensive. The more we thought about it the harder it seemed to be to make a decision. ‘First world problems, where to stay on this luxury island, and how much to spend per night, £10 or £12,’ my husband said, grounding us.
We booked a few more nights in the same place to give us some time, and decided to all go choose somewhere when they got back. The place where we were staying said we might have to move rooms for the extra bit, and asked us to come and choose the one we wanted. (We’d paid for a fan room, and been given an ac room, with the ac turned off. If they sold the ac room, we’d need to move.) The ac rooms were also bigger and nicer. In the middle of this, my husband’s taxi arrived and he had to go, leaving the final decision to me.
Ahh, anxiety, responsibility! I was shown around the fan rooms by Danny Dyer and picked one, the biggest. But when I got back to my room, I thought, did I check the beds properly? Our friend had a bad back, and so does my husband sometimes; what if the beds are uncomfortable? I went into a cold sweat. I lay on the bed, paralysed. I even cried. Then I stopped, I went for a walk; I remembered what I had decided: Be more aware, and if you haven’t, rectify it, if you can.
The first time I walked past the office. The second time I went in and asked could I just look at the rooms again, I was in a hurry before and I don’t know if I checked them properly. No problem, of course. Both sets of beds felt exactly the same; my decision was ok.
Back at the room I did a long, proper- as in mindful, into it deeply- yoga session, then healing, then accidental nap.
I beat myself up about not going swimming, ‘What have I even done today,’ but so tired, hence low mood, maybe PMS? I ask for time alone but it is dangerous. I pulled myself together and went for dinner. The onsite restaurant had little bells on each table to ring for service. I disliked doing this, but it only made it worse. I’d wait for someone to come, be fearful that no one was coming. Plus I often used the space for writing, which was fine, but meant that they didn’t always know if I wanted food or not. The next morning I was hopelessly self conscious at breakfast, loads of people near loud, I felt invisible, people pouring in, not ringing bell, confusion re ordered or not, who coming to take order…
It was a weird place to be alone, a party/couples/young people holiday place by myself for four days: a bit sad and lonely but safe, with the nice staff and an easy environment, and a good opportunity for writing, yoga, swimming, I told myself.
I spent the first night in a state of anxiety about spiders, having had one only a couple of nights before. I stayed out in the evening and kept the light off so I wouldn’t see anything. The second night I heard people coming back at 3am and being sick, and sick again in the morning. Even once my fear about spiders had subsided a bit I still couldn’t sleep.
The next day I tidied up and asked for the room to be cleaned, to reduce risk of spiders, writing in the restaurant while it was being done. A nice waiter told me about what its like during the Full Moon Party (the night my husband and friend would be back), more people come every day, this whole place full, kitchen forgets food orders… ahhh. ‘Crying, lost phones, we tell them, don’t take out, don’t take card, just take enough for how many drinks you have but…’ Not looking forward to that AT ALL.
Every day I made lists and stuck to them, yoga, sort out and take laundry, go for breakfast, write, swim, lunch, town, hair… Stick with the plan, the to do list, if not happy at least satisfied… Get up early, do yoga, collect laundry, tidy room, empty bins, go shopping, WordPress, yoga, hang up clothes, unpack stuff shoved in backpack while room cleaned, made space for J, breakfast, writing, walk, swim, writing, dinner…
To the swimming pool cafe, the wind and the rain got up whilst I was there, the staff rolled down the clear plastic at the sides of the covered but open sided ‘indoor’ eating area. I ordered french fries, got more than I could eat, and a pot of Liptons tea. There were a few other tourists, young Westerners, couples. I read my notes, organising my work, conceptualising it, feeling that it was okay. I had some social anxiety, which was better the next time I went, I ate lovely Pad Thai made specially for me with tofu, it was sunny and I ate it outside.
At the swimming pool, thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to be a successful writer and have a swimming pool. But I am writing every day and I am at a pool, which I have to myself. ‘I have everything already.’
Getting into being alone at the same time as looking forward to them coming.
Orange cat came by in the evening and was still there after I came back from dinner, as if keeping me company. I tried everything to sleep, all the exercises I know. The only thing that really helped me was thinking about the little orange cat sitting outside on the bench, like a talisman.
Two young Irish women who had looked after M on her last night, been dancing with her whilst we sat outside, chatted with me about travelling after breakfast one day and invited me for a drink in the evening. I’d said maybe, thinking I wouldn’t want to, then as the day wore on, thought why not? But when it came to it they were in a group with some young guys. I thought they wouldn’t want to see me, so I walked past, eyes down. ‘You’re not the kind of person people want to spend time with.’ Ringing in my thoughts. But I didn’t want to make small talk with a group of drunk people, I only wanted to chat soberly and with just them. I’m a control freak too, as well as not always being very nice.
I read a post on WordPress about, ‘You may have noticed how it’s easier to criticise yourself than have other people do it.’ That’s what ‘internalising the negative messages’ actually means. After twenty years in mental health I only just understood that.
Bethany Kays posted on her blog on WordPress about how it was much harder to be mindful without her husband present, about how she’d wanted some mindful photography alone time but found that she was afraid without him there and that was distracting. Bethany has real things to be afraid of, alligators, spooked wild horses, and uses a wheelchair. My fears were all in my mind, but still, I recognised the timing of this post.
DSFB had been getting very deep and I was struggling to absorb his message. I wish he would explain his philosophy more simply, I thought, and he did: ‘Try and be fulfilled; Be nice to people; Enjoy what’s in front of you.’
After two nights I realised I could watch Netflix. I mean I knew that, but I forget to enjoy myself, I think only of writing and anything that might need to be done, forgetting that in the evening I could watch something. I mean if my husband is there I’m with him so that’s taken care of, we’ll spend time together or watch something that he will have downloaded and organised for me.
Anyway, I spent the third and fourth evenings sitting out on the balcony with the cat, watching stuff on my tablet.
‘That looks like my kind of evening,’ my neighbour said returning to get ready to go out, looking as if she’d rather stay in, me with my feet propped up on the table. ‘I’ve even got a cat,’ I said. And the battery lasted right up until the end, then died seconds after it* finished.
I went to the office to see if we had to move rooms or not, she said yes. I quickly packed up, she’d said ten minutes. But I wasn’t sure we’d understood each other. I went back. ‘You can stay.’ Maybe she’d misunderstood me and thought I’d wanted to move, maybe she’d had a think and rearranged some bookings. I went back and unpacked again. The fan rooms we were offered were fine, but this was much better! I was so glad I checked. This was one of those times when I got it right. Packing, unpacking, back and forth to the office, I was very hot, but happy, and looking forward to them coming.
I went back to the shop that wouldn’t serve me and bought some gold hoop earrings. It was part pragmatism, it was the only place where I’d seen cheap earrings, and part wanting a do over. I didn’t want that every time I walked past or thought of that shop or that man it would be about that not so nice day. Now it was of him smiling as I paid for the earrings, me sitting on the little step outside, unwrapping them, putting them in, me happy with my new haircut and blow-dry, the first time I’d had my hair blow dried for months. Afterwards buying a pack of cigarettes and some strawberry coloured lipbalm from the 7/11. Returning home, ordering a beer- at not quite 12 o’clock- and taking it back to the balcony. Happily waiting for my husband and our friend to arrive, listening to Prince and co playing While my guitar gently weeps, putting on my pink lipbalm and my kohl from India, making mild smoky eyes…
(*Anne with and E two episodes second night. First night finished off last episode of Thirteen Reasons Why Season Two, and watched all the discussions afterwards. Apparently the awful stuff depicted is happening in American High Schools every day. I know my stepdaughter and her friends didn’t like it because they couldn’t believe things would be that bad and that relentlessly bad, because their school in London isn’t like that, or not as far as they know anyway. And that the legal stuff is accurate, without giving away spoilers.)
Thank you very much for reading
TRAVEL UPDATE
In Tokyo, having a very interesting time. I have met up with B, writer and fellow blogger I met via WordPress and we have been discussing the big questions! Here until Monday then back to India- and my husband!
I don’t have a smart phone, I don’t read newspapers, I don’t look at any online news media. This is fine when I am out of the house, I always carry a notebook (moleskine) and pen (pilot G2). But what to do in the house, in those little bits of inbetween times, waiting for dinner to cook or a bath to run; or just wanting to do something diverting for a little while. My husband has particular things he watches on youtube. I, nowadays, have wordpress blogs.
I don’t want to get overwhelmed with too many blogs coming into my inbox, or end up spending too much time on the internet, so I am very discerning about who I follow. I have got it down to a few that are all different and that I have chosen for different reasons: writes beautifully about Japan, I want to go there now! Has a great bio. Describes Buddhism in action. Teaches me about India. Writes about writing. And then there are the young women who are so smart, who write so well and so openly at the same time, about a whole range of subjects, some inside my experience, some not, who are putting their observations and opinions out there for us readers and writers to experience and learn about each others lives.
So it seems like such a shame when these same smart, funny, capable individuals report their sadnesses and struggles. I want to offer unsolicited advice, words of encouragement; to be able to say something that might help.
I don’t know if that is possible though. I don’t know if when I was sad and lonely, when I couldn’t see further than the fog in front of my face, when I didn’t even know I was on a path, let alone that that path would lead me from ‘There’ to ‘Here’, when I didn’t even know that ‘Here’ existed… If someone had said to me, keep going, hang in there, it won’t always be like this, one day you’ll look back and find your life, and you, have changed beyond recognition, would it have helped?
I don’t know. But I do know that on the other side of friction and difficulty is growth, and that it’s the strange world/society/life we live in, until we break out of it, that is often the problem, rather than the sensitive, creative individual that is struggling (although it is the individual who has to change things).
Who knows what is going to be the thing to trip the switch? Meeting someone, taking up a practice, changing something, anything, that in turn triggers some kind of shift.
And in the meantime, there’s always cats!
Meet Fred (big, and extremely cuddly once he gets to know you)
and Alfie (adventurous, sits outside the house making friends with all the passers by; one little girl calls him ‘Steve’. Will sit on anybody’s lap if they sit down for two minutes).
To find what is interesting about my life, past and present
To add interest and purpose to my life via the writing of it
To see patterns or a purpose via the process of reflection, noticing and writing
To work out solutions or
To document solutions/changes/resolutions as they occur and develop
To overcome depression and anxiety
To make peace with the past
I am increasing realising that it takes lateral thinking to interpret the signs from the universe. My mum gave me a children’s book she had found when moving house. She said, you liked this, I mean youreally liked it, that’s why I am asking you if you want it. So I took it and read it and tried to remember it, but I just couldn’t. But a year later I realise, it wasn’t about remembering the book, it was the message I needed to remember. The book was about doing drawings that came to life, drawings that came true… So it was about me being reminded that the act of writing can influence the future, like magic, writing literally spells for me.
If there’s nothing I want to change and nothing I need help with, or if I’m simply integrating new insights, growth and awareness, then I won’t be writing. I will go in and out of writing and day to day life. Like going underneath the water to look at the fish, and up again to breathe and feel the sun on my face.
It’s a science experiment, it’s a memoir, its personal therapy, and for others, maybe it’s at least validating if not actual self help…
…Take a fearless moral inventory, as they say in AA. I am such a shameless student that I even looked up online to see if there is a template you can download for doing this.* But all I really need is this, my fingers tapping on my keyboard…
*There is, of course
Orlando: The writing, the looking, the process of writing, leads to something else, and it is the something else that it is all about.
The tingly feeling when you feel like you are writing your life into existence, or delving into your subconscious: It’s all about the present moment- although that is fleeting. Past, present and future all exist at the same time and the ‘aim’ if there is one, is to integrate them into a whole. Into the present moment (I accidentally wrote, integrate them in the present moment, which is also true).
Ok, so this is how the magic happens: At the end of a piece about the past, I intend to type the word boring but mistype it. (After all these years I’ve never gotten good at typing and I think too fast for my fingers so that when I pause for breath every paragraph is littered with red lines.) I click on the misspelt boring and the word ‘bemiring’ comes up. I didn’t know what it meant so I looked it up on the online dictionary- and it wasn’t there. Just as had happened before (documented in my previous book). But just as had happened before, the ‘word of the day’ on the dictionary home page was something significant- sticking out in bright red this time: Goth*. Just as I’d been back in the past. Reminding me that it’s the Fairytale Past. It has no more relevance than if it had never existed. I am so far away from someone who sits around thinking about the end of the world and death (not in a gloomy kind of way anyway). Teaching me that funny spell checks and the word of the day are spells that work for me. As I write this my fingers are tingling, they are writing by themselves, my eyes are pricking, the inside of my nose is tingling.
And lastly, and most importantly: if I hadn’t stopped writing, I wouldn’t have been able to write this.
*goth: a type of rock music that often has words expressing ideas about death or the end of the world
Named after the really great book by Stephen King On Writing (I can’t actually read any of his books because I don’t like reading anything scary, but I love this book about the writing process.
The last time my mood got really low was during a period of stress at work, a minor distance from my husband, and loneliness in my female friendships. On top of that, I had stopped writing. At the time, I didn’t care, I didn’t even put it down as a hobby when I filled out an application form. Instead I put singing!* I spent the day alone watching Boyhood(real time film about families and growing up that shows just how fast it all goes). It showed the good bits and the mistakes and got me thinking of all the things I could have done differently. I called a few friends, they were all busy or unavailable. I panicked: should I go back to counselling? Was I depressed? Or was I, as I suddenly realised, just a writer who had stopped writing? My fingers tingled, and I began to write…
*I moved and had to find a new yoga class. The yoga teacher introduced me to someone who lived in my new town. That person invited me to join a pop up singing group. I was blissed out after yoga and agreed. I thought maybe it was about me getting rid of my inhibitions. It did do that, but it led onto something much more important. The singing group woman also invited me to a book club and gave me the names of the two books they were reading. I went to the library, it was closed, I went to the book shop, it only had one of the two books in- Orlando. I made my excuses about the book club but I read Orlando. It was better, much better for me than the singing; seeming to unlock my writing, focus and structure, and if I had to pay my dues in advance by wearing a silly hat and singing out of tune in public then it was a fair price.
The fact that I got so low over a film shows how fragile my state of being was and how sensitive I was that a film could put me in that place, and how this new found neutrality is quite literally a life saver, that now I can run over a baby rabbit on the way to work and barely give it a second thought.**
**If you are like I was, and find even reading that upsetting, let me ease you by saying: It ran out in front of me as I was driving along a main road, hurtling across the middle. I put on my brakes- I didn’t slam them, but nor did I check in my rear view mirror either, so that evens out the me-rabbit balance, but I felt it go under the front driver wheel. I wondered afterwards, would it have been better not to have braked? If I had been going slightly faster, would I have gone past it, or at least would the front wheels have gone past it? An old boyfriend of mine told me that animals have better instincts than us and it is best not to brake as they will have judged it. So are all the dead animals and birds at the side of the roads not as I always thought, due to people driving too fast, or animals and birds walking , running or flying unavoidably out in front of you, but are actually the result of caring drivers slamming on their brakes? Probably not. I think he was mainly referring to deer, as he had hit one a few years previously, driving through Thetford Forest. It had run out, no way to stop it. He said they made eye contact as it hit the windscreen. That was my Vietnam, he used to say. I don’t know if baby rabbits are as capable as grown deer of judging speeds and distances of traffic on main roads. Apparently they don’t even know what to eat, they just eat anything and everything and it’s just luck or trial and error if they survive. So it’s not that I didn’t give running over a baby rabbit a second thought, it’s just that I decided not to get upset about it.
Call off the Search: How I stopped seeking and found peace
Chapter 10: Every Day Healing
Going through boxes as part of getting ready to move, old photos of me as a child- how terribly sad I looked at ten, better a bit later. My school books, I threw out. My son’s, I kept. My mum’s CV- travelled the world hitchhiking alone in 1968, all sorts of different community projects, renovating a derelict house singlehanded with two young children. My grandmother’s travel diary from when she took me as a sulky fifteen year old to Italy. Photographs of me in dresses my other grandmother made. A note from my grandmother after my grandfather died, ‘from grandpa with his deep love for you’.
Ancestors give you stuff; they pass on their attributes, and their weaknesses, they give you experiences, they show you how to be, as well as how not to be. They invest in you, give their love and time and attention, but the fruits of their labours may only fully blossom and then ripen once they and most of their things are long gone.
My mother’s mother commented on others’ lives right up to the end. She tried to control my mum’s life, or at least she commented on it, right up until she died, by which time my mum was in her sixties. Right up to the last months of her life she would tell me I was fat, in front of visitors and other family members. My mum doesn’t say anything directly to me, which is an improvement. And if I can learn not to tell my son what to do with his life and not talk about him behind his back, then that will have improved things even more. (Don’t tell my son how to live his life- this includes indirect references to things that could be construed as, or actually are, unsolicited advice- telling him about the Hare Krishna mantra was borderline at best.)
I used to just have guilt around my mother and my son, then I learned to have a little bit of anger as well, to be able to say aloud (or at least, to write down): bringing up my son was very difficult, I had a difficult child to bring up. (He was brought up by a teenage mother who didn’t know what she was doing, so he probably has loads of anger too, but that is for him, not me.) Into and throughout my adult life, I have had a mother who has very strong opinions and judgements about most things, especially men. It’s not so much the views themselves, but how stridently they are held, so that it’s hard to be free to be yourself. Myself.Funny how that’s hard to write. (But it’s not about her needing to do anything or that she should do anything- it’s for me to do the work, it’s for me to set myself free, to be free, and just do whatever I want without defending or justifying myself).
Emotions to deal with: anger: access and make friends with it, enjoy allowing myself to feel it and then let go, but I can’t let go until I stop repressing it. I could even be angry with my younger self, instead of always being so compassionate, poor her, etc. etc. You could have done so much, you were hot, you were powerful; you silly stubborn thing, determined to be miserable! I am perfectly happy now, but I am just saying; Wow, you made it hard for yourself/us!
Maybe instead of guilt being my default response to everything I could experiment with other things, like anger, like hedonism, like self care comes first, for example.
I hardly EVER go in record shops but I was with a friend who collects vinyl so we went in one, and there in front of me was a Jesus and Mary Chain Psychocandy poster. I thought it was an original old one, I didn’t realise it was advertising a 30 year anniversary tour. If I’d said anything out loud the record shop man or my friend might have realised I was confused and put me right, but I didn’t. Thirty years ago I was fifteen and so desperate to see them, I was at boarding school and not allowed out. A boy in my year went, his dad made an excuse so he could go, I was so jealous. They played for fifteen minutes with their backs to the audience and walked off but still, it had been one of life’s big regrets. But luckily for me the universe gave me another chance. A few weeks later a patient asked to go to a concert-this is a fairly unusual request- and I also fairly unusually offered to get involved and look up local gig programmes… I looked up the UEA programme and there it was, Jesus and Mary Chain Psychocandy 30 year anniversary tour £25.
Oh, thank you, thank you, so much pleasure. I went on my own to just soak it all up. A sound bath; the lights red with gun like firing of individual white lights, a wall of dry ice lit white, almost all the stage eclipsed. Seeing mosh pit kids, a girl with dark hair, her face lit up with happiness. Images on the screen, a serious, sad looking girl (me, at fifteen, thirty years ago) and then at the end a pair of infrared heat image hands, (me now, healing hands). I don’t want anything to come between me and this awareness. The bar tender gives me free sparkling water, a man gives me a token for free car parking. You don’t need to ask for help to make your path, you have created this life, and it is perfect.
On healing… I don’t believe in spirit guides or anything like that, not for me anyway, they may well be true for other people. I’ve been doing it a while now, and with experience comes confidence that it will come, and so it comes… I only have to think about healing, or raise my hands above a person and they heat up. I relax and tune in to all that feeling, and concentrate my mind and energies on giving healing- just thinking that that is what I am doing is enough really, and then just staying in focus. I start with resting hands lightly on shoulders, then go over the chakras, then back to the shoulders. And, often, bliss: like being ensconced in a bubble of love, feet swaying, body swaying, dizzy, feels almost the same getting it as giving it, except when giving I stay in focus that that is what I am doing. I see green light sometimes. A lovely warm feeling, purposeful, like I know what I am here for.
Healing a woman who said she felt as if she had stress in every area of her life, but was ‘trying to think positive as there’s other people worse off’ (i.e. telling herself off for feeling bad). I think trying to be positive when you don’t feel it is self invalidating and can cause more suffering and I also think the message has been corrupted; it’s more about remaining intact, having faith no matter what, not being happy no matter what. It’s like how people have interpreted mindfulness to be stopping all your thoughts- which my counsellor says is nonsense.
I am finding my own opinions, my own way of doing things. My own levels of healing: I had met John as I started to heal, more stuff came up, re childhood stuff, I dealt with that and moved on. Later, more stuff came up, I began counselling, and as I am healed, I become a better healer. I am a stronger healer for having gotten better (lately got really strong, same time as the counselling?
My teacher said, ‘this is Sadie, she is a very powerful healer.’ I remember her saying a while back, you have to sort yourself out first, i.e. before you become a healer, well yes, to a certain extent but then the healing helps you to further heal, in ways you may not have identified without embarking on it (like art therapy and having to have your own psychotherapy along the way as part of it). It’s perfectly natural really that it should be this way.
Practiced healing on Kim after yoga. She is a healer and I worried, what if she doesn’t feel anything, but afterwards she said it was the strongest energy she had ever felt from a healer. She doesn’t work full time, each morning she does chi gung and meditates and sends healing to people- goes through their bodies, sometimes does an hour as she has time and it made me realise, it validated: This stuff is important, even though work is the thing that pays the bills, or, the fact that work pays the bills doesn’t mean it is the central thing of value in your life. Meditation and healing are the pivotal things around which life can revolve (this concept of pivots etc comes up a lot in yoga). Build my life outside of work, invest in these things, and they will invest in me/all will be well.
Did healing on John- he said my hands felt so hot he could feel the heat off my hand which was on his chest, he could feel the heat on his throat, under chin, and when my hands were on his shoulders he could feel it all through his body.
At work I saw someone at lunch that I hadn’t seen for ages. I think it was to show me that I am different now. Sometimes you only notice by encountering a person or situation from past and finding that you respond differently and feel different. I noticed the way he seemed so supportive yet it is just business; the way he criticised people I liked, the way he gave me advice… And I realised, I don’t need your advice and support, I have outgrown you. I am not that anxious awkward person in awe of having dinner at the Premier Inn with people from head office. I am capable and confident.
Everyday gratitude:
Swimming pool empty and friendly- two people talked to me.
Car park almost full, spaces looked a bit tight for me but then I find two spaces next to each other and what was more, one also had a space in front of it so I could drive straight through to be facing ready to go.
Two staff at the whole foods shop, astonishingly friendly, talking at length about their cats.
Driving home in the dark, I noticed the pretty pointy silhouette of a chapel, a beautifully illuminated pink neon No Vacancies sign and a pretty yellow window lit up.
A meeting got postponed so I only have to do one report not two this week.
The secretaries next door offering me biscuits just as I was getting hungry at 4pm.
All falling into place ‘live life as though everything is rigged in your favour.’
Sitting on floor, stapling papers, staples ran out and I remembered I’d found a little chunk of staples the day before and put them by my computer just within arm’s reach.
A member of staff I don’t know being extra nice and friendly, like the staff in the whole foods shop.
Finding some extra pouches of cat food so I don’t need to go shopping today.
Home, stars, little walk.
My stepdaughter saying ‘let’s go home and have hot dogs* and watch Buffy on the sofa with blankets and one cat each, what more could we want?’ *vegetarian ones
Someone at work introducing me: ‘this woman is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, and you can tell by looking at her that she is just like this at home too’.
Someone else saying that I have the happiest team in the hospital.
One of my staff bought me a posh houseplant ‘because you’d been having a hard time recently, I wanted to give you something happy.’
A moment shared with a member of staff on her last day. ‘As you go up the ranks it can be, ‘Lonely’’, we both said at the same time.
After going to a friend’s party, John saying, that’s the most relaxed I’ve seen you in company, even making jokes!
An old friend asking, are you still writing and me saying yes, he said I’m glad and me asking, are you still drawing and him saying yes, but it’s just a hobby, I’ve accepted that and me saying me too (except I haven’t, not really).
Massage today, didn’t have the surface niggles, so went deeper.
I ‘woke up’ on the massage table, hair everywhere, enlivened, thinking, what if I just arrived here, what would I observe about myself? I am hungry for good healthy food, I have a nice job, Iam a healer in training, I am married,I have an adult son and two step children, I drive around a lot and go away with work no problem, Isleep well, I exist separately to my thoughts.
I get up early in the morning, compared with John anyway, who gets up half an hour before he needs to leave, I allow about an hour and a half or two hours. Partly because I faff around a lot and also this year I have been meditating but the real reason I like this time is that now and again I will have a little treat: I will put the internet on and check my emails or I will sit at the bottom of the stairs and read for five minutes or I will do a little sorting out job, something that I wouldn’t normally do in the morning before I leave for work. I had one of those moments looking at my bookshelf. John’s sister was coming to stay with her friend and spiritual guru so I had been getting the room ready. I started thinking about books and the bookshelf as it is in the spare room. I thought first about if I had anything to lend John’s sister, and then I thought about if they looked through the books on the bookshelf, and wondered if I should put them in any sort of order.
I looked at them impassively, as an outsider would, and this is what I saw: John’s books, sci fi, psychedelic, spiritual novels, and mine: New Zealand literature and creative writing books; a set of women’s erotica, all containing a short story written by me; Eat Pray Love, various other spiritual journey books, all mixed up and mixed in with Lace (from when I was 11 or 12, not the original copy, although it looks like it, old and battered. I can still remember the woman being fingered and brought to orgasm in the cellar, whilst wearing a primrose suit). Princess Daisy, ditto, loved for the hot lesbian scene; When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and Goodbye Mog by Judith Kerr, and The Fault in my Stars. All the books I have listed are my favourites. If that paints a picture of me, I feel it is strangely accurate. Looking at myself reflected back to me via the medium of my bookshelf was a thoughtful and nice experience, a concrete illustration of my eclecticness. That I am made up of a lot of different things that are strangely synthesised into something pretty. I like the way the bookcase is, I am happy for people to look at it.
Call off the Search: How I stopped seeking and found peace
Chapter 9 Discernment
Last night
Two episodes of House of Cards and then he puts my hand on his trousers and we have sex on the couch and I swear it was exactly like being on MDMA but with no side effects, no horrible head fucking thoughts. It felt like being in a film, so turned on it was surreal, happy MDMA-type tears, eyes watering by themselves. I said afterwards, ‘I went somewhere else’. The light, the room, juddering and flicking from side to side like it does when you’ve taken a ton of MDMA and him going up the stairs to bed saying what we were both thinking, ‘Who needs drugs’. We haven’t spoken about it since but oh my God, proof of everything, if we needed it.
We’d spent most of 2015 completely straight: no drugs, no alcohol, I had also given up caffeine, John had also given up sugar. And then the Buddhism wore off…
But at its height it (Buddhism) felt ironically like being on drugs (high after class, the air cool and warm at the same time). We both realised it was over at the same time. We were standing in the kitchen by the backdoor and both realised we didn’t want to do the next class after all (we had planned to do the year long foundation course). John said, we burn through things quickly now don’t we? I had just bought him all this Buddhist stuff (we still have a Buddha in almost every room of the house) but neither of us were offended about the other suddenly going off it.
Shortly afterwards I went out to dinner with a friend and tried to explain, referencing Krishnamurti (don’t follow anyone) and John and Yoko (I don’t believe in magic, mantra, etc.)
‘It sounds like you’ve gone through some kind of enlightenment,’ she said and then asked, ‘are you still vegetarian?’
I was puzzled, thinking, it’s not that I’ve given up on awareness, and once you have it you have it.
Suddenly it just seemed pointless, the rigid no drinking at all, no caffeine, even the Buddhist teacher had said it doesn’t necessarily mean no wine can pass your lips, it’s just about not being intoxicated. It’s a barrier between me and friends who drink, so I decided that the day we went to another friend’s I would have a coffee and some wine. We made dinner while we got a bit drunk and we couldn’t mash the potatoes because they were still raw and it was all a bit chaotic for a bit. Maybe just one glass of wine is good for me now. And then when I went out the other night with friends I had a glass of wine, felt better re barriers, they were drunk, and we all got on really well, and I felt really relaxed.
So how does that lead onto MDMA? The MDMA is me, wanting that again, we both were, but now he is talking about never doing it again, maybe we just needed to remind ourselves we can if we like, maybe. Or just remind ourselves what it is like, the good and the bad- 3 or 4 days recovery. No music, singing along to YouTube, lying paralysed, naked and sweating. Marrying you was the best thing I ever did with my life. Or for my life: it gives me all this freedom, and it gives me excitement and bad boy tendencies without the angst and drama that wrecks and destabilises lives.
MDMA is like a searchlight, but this time at last there was nothing to find, we lay in each other’s arms on the couch, for an extended period with no tv, film or music, just us, talking, and aside from a bit of smutty sharing of sexual fantasies, there were no surprises, no dark secrets or hidden longings to discuss, no marriage, no children, no family secrets, no adolescent incidents of previously paralysing shame to heal…. It wasn’t boring by any means: it was wonderful, that we could be so free, relaxed and spacious, but at the same time, have we reached a clearing, a clear place? So maybe we can give it up now? Certainly, we have had sex sober that was every bit as amazing as sex on MDMA, and with us both entirely present in every way, from the cerebral to the mundane to the spiritual to the tantric ecstatic.
We said at the time, we should make time for this: lying together, smelling each other, just love, no conversations re kids etc., and if you can have a spiritual drug free rave and get high with strangers and no drugs, surelyweshould be able to do it alone in our house?
Well I guess we already did, last night. Sometimes you have an idea and realise you’ve already executed it, like life or the forces of life were faster than your ideas and imagination, which I guess is often or maybe always the case but doesn’t always get realised….
Christmas 2015: slacking off re caffeine, chocolate, sugar, alcohol and drugs and then realising I actually prefer life as it was: getting stoned really stoned once or twice after not doing it is great, and sex was amazing, but doing it every nights for four nights, it wears thin, and leads to eating chocolate, and being sluggish next day, sleeping in and being too lazy to do exercise. I prefer walking and doing yoga every day with the occasional blow out. It’s the same re the internet and facebook, food, shopping and time- discernment and awareness is the key.
Christmas
Thinking about what it would take for me to enjoy it- what do I enjoy that could be done at Christmas?
Things I enjoy or that make me feel good that with some effort, dedication and single mindedness I can do in spite of Christmas: a Yoga class on YouTube, an hour long walk, eating healthy-ish, even doing a bit of writing- just a snatched half an hour while everyone goes out (this is probably not even so much about the writing but about having a little oasis of alone time during the festivities)
Things I like about Christmas that go on anyway and I can just join in with: not going to work Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon, drinking Baileys at any time of day, staying up late watching films with my step son, sleeping in, eating whenever and whatever I like(contradicts previous bit I know!)
Funny things such as realising for what seems like the first time, why people/a person/me might enjoy Christmas: the change of routine, the party atmosphere, the laying around, drinking, not having to go to work, holidays. Ignore the shopping and the stress and the religiosity/consumerism debates, the hand wringing, the sad stories and the stress. Just look at the lights and think of chocolate.
(I haven’t written any Christmas cards, nor did I last year, and possibly the year before. I used to make them all by hand and deliver them on foot!)
‘The family that I have chosen’, I said on Boxing Day when I crashed through the door, falling on the couch with a bottle of Baileys and all family visits done.
Friendship
Looking through my old, much scribbled in address book at all the names that are no longer a part of my life; old landlords, hairdressers, work contacts, book clubs I am no longer in, people who have died, people I have lost touch with, people I never really was in touch with… Hopeful contacts, someone I met at work that I thought might have become a friend. People I’d met through work who once the work finished I never saw. People who I had been to their house once: a mum at the school, who invited me to her house for lunch, she cooked lasagne, we saw each other now and again but didn’t really become close. The doctor from work who invited me and my boyfriend for dinner with her lawyer husband in their huge barn conversion. We were too in awe to return the invitation. Some relationships hopeful, some forced, some I wonder about calling, I think they would be happy to see me, but wonder if we really have anything still, or maybe just feeling awkward that it’s been so long. Others I know I will not call- it never was anything, and I am happy to let them go. And some of course long standing friends that I am still in touch with even after all these years.
The point of all this rambling and reflection is that I have always had some difficulties/concerns around friendships- namely, that I haven’t got enough, that I don’t call people enough (although actually with the exception of one or two people I don’t think any of them ever call me), and I often don’t feel myself with them. Or that I don’t know what sort of friends are me, or that I want. Because I haven’t known who I am, how can I expect to know what friends I should have? And how can I expect other people to know me when I don’t know myself?
Looking back I have felt so awkward with a lot of these people, it’s surprising we are still friends. When I lived in a council flat I felt awkward just going to anyone’s who had a reasonable house. I overcompensated: when I was in a middle class book club in Norwich I remember one night it was my turn to host it at my flat. Only one person came, and there was all this cheese, I must have spent twenty pounds on cheese alone. I understand now that my attitude must have created something of a barrier. But I also think that maybe I have struggled to meet people who I really click with because I haven’t really clicked with myself.
One of the side effects of a spiritual awakening is loneliness within your friendships. I don’t need to talk about it anymore, but I needed to when it was first happening to me. I told one friend that it felt like a miracle, meeting John, and she said yes, I think it is a miracle, which was nice. Several friends read my book, and put up with me. But still, it’s not the same when your friends are not going through the same thing and I often felt worse for trying to explain what was happening as I just sounded crazy. Nowadays I have a few people I can talk to, as they have discovered it since and some have come to me or come into my life and talked about it, but back then it was only me, and John. Not that I want to be with the really ‘out there’ people either- I want the down to earth. Which is why it was so nice at Yoga, the healing, with Kim and Melinda, feeling instantly comfortable, they are both down to earth and into healing. They don’t wear robes or anything, are not false or pretentious or over the top. I don’t need to find people that believe in exactly the same things, I just need people who have an awareness of something else, but in a genuine, quiet way, not in a provocative or statement way.
It’s well reported on that during or in a spiritual journey it can be lonely; you can feel disconnected from your friends, you can even feel critical of them, of their negativity, of their asleep ness, of the fact that they don’t have a spiritual practice and of the fact that they don’t ‘get you’. But aside from the advice of the Dali Lama which is that it is more useful to identify a single shortcoming in yourself than a hundred in others, which I will endeavour to remember, your friends have every right to feel at least as disappointed in you as you do in them, after all, they haven’t done anything wrong, they haven’t changed. You, on the other hand, could be seen to have to a certain extent abandoned them.
Sometimes I visit a good friend and feel distant, unable to connect. I feel more connected with a person I just met on my yoga class and the thought flits through my mind of abandoning all my friends and making new ones.
Sometimes I just have my usual old problem of not really planning or living my days according to my needs: I make a list of friends like a to do list, contact everyone, do loads of visiting, regret the time alone I lost. (I have read since that as your vibration level rises, or your frequency rises, friends do sometimes fall away. Also, that you don’t desire to see people as much, and need more time alone.)
Other times I visit an old friend, feel relaxed and connected, talk about all sorts of things including politics (her topic) and healing (mine). I maybe meet her halfway by raising politics (a subject I normally avoid like the plague) re getting active with food cycle, and she maybe meets me halfway by having healing, getting into it and talking about feeling a spiritual shift.
This ‘process’ I am going through is having a cleansing and purifying effect; spring cleaning me, applying search and destroy, finding residual issues to work on. ‘It’ works in a different way to worry, where the mind skates around, looking for things, real and imaginary, to worry about. This works on an unconscious level so that, for example, when I need to work on my thoughts, I pick up a book and open it at the ‘thought lab’ page containing everyday thought exercises. I keep it open there for weeks, and when I do pick it up to look at other exercises, all the other things I find are so totally not me that I scurry back to the thought lab page and leave it open there in the bathroom for another few weeks.