Sick and Tired in Delhi PART TWO

Tags

Cloth sanitary pads, Delhi, family, India bus journeys, Main Bazar, Parent child relationships, Periods, Periods and travelling in India, Pushkar, relationships

Sick and Tired in Delhi PART TWO
‘You took the red pill’

Extract from draft book chapter about our time in Delhi in October

I sent my son some money and a message, ‘Well done, we’re both so proud of you.’ At same time, cutting the cord. You can cut the cord and still be loving. In fact doing that, rather than being distant actually sets you free. It sets you both free.

Same with my mum- little messages with pics, and no angst from me. This sets me miles and miles away. I thought being distant does that, but it doesn’t necessarily do that

Being all cosy cosy can keep you emeshed. This isn’t emeshed. It’s kind, it’s nice, it’s fairly non emotional- as in, it’s happy but not riddled with guilt or upset like before or feeling trapped by my mother.

My son’s doing better set free from me. I’m doing better set free from my mum. But with no angst to hold us in conflict. It’s so simple put like that.

Is this the magic secret, all there is to it, the how to transition from child to adult relationships that I never previously understood? How to transition from anger ridden despair teen breakdown, and overly emeshed thirty something into own life?
Yes, yes, it’s just like this.

Delhi is known for being polluted, and while we were there the air quality was particularly bad. Bryan Adams did a show and tweeted a photograph of himself, barely visible beyond the smog. We wondered whether it was better to have the ac on or to leave it off and keep the windows closed. We researched it and discovered that ac only gives a false sense of security and doesn’t get all the dangerous particulates out. We came across adverts for companies selling bottled air in Delhi. My heart went out to the people who live there all the time.

After Delhi we were going to Rajasthan for a month, a week in each city, we had booked the trains ages ago. But at least one of those cities was as polluted as Delhi. We’d just experienced a lot of pollution in Varanasi. After Rajasthan we had flights booked to go to Kathmandu, also known for poor air quality.

And there was an outbreak of Zika virus in Jaipur, our first stop in Rajasthan. Although very dangerous only for pregnant women, neither of us wanted to risk getting ill with something else.

We procrastinated for ages, the two of us struggling to make a decision, too much choice, not feeling well. Balancing what we want to do/feel up to doing in the present with will we regret not going to all those places once the trip is over. In the end we ripped up the plan, cancelled all the trains and decided to just go to Pushkar, the smallest and least polluted place on our plan.

All the trains were sold out- which was why we’d booked them so far in advance- we could only get there by bus. As there are no loos on buses we had to wait until we were well. We felt trapped in Delhi; we felt like the food and the pollution made us ill, or at least didn’t help, yet we couldn’t leave until we were well. We stayed six nights in that room in Delhi.

On our last morning we ate breakfast at the hotel sitting out into the rooftop, porridge made with water, with banana. It was so nice being out together, it felt like an outing. The past few days had been mainly spent indoors, one of us only going out for food or drink or to the pharmacy over the road. Once or twice we went to the cafe downstairs, which was a bit sad; greasy and with doors that opened into the pollution of the street.

We watched a Westerner, he lived right at the top above the dirty kitchen, completing Hindu rituals, or possibly just washing with a water bottle, we weren’t sure. We watched him doing his laundry on the rooftop. What a life. We wondered what his story was? Divorced? Living on a pension? Hindu convert? Disappeared?

That night we got a rickshaw from the hotel to catch the night bus to Pushkar and saw the Delhi smog close up.

I tried to soak up the sights of Main Bazar, the neon lights, the mopeds, the cows, I saw a cow and a calf with big floppy ears; knowing it might be our last time. I lost concentration, and Main Bazar was gone.

We were into a different area, we saw veg restaurants, pure veg places, I thought, Why didn’t we go here? Oh, yes, we were sick and ill and indoors!

And then, utter craziness, ‘worse’ than Kolkata. Cows, thin cows, cows with floppy ears, cows trying to eat non existent grass in the middle of road, like the central reservation, and licking a stone in the middle of the barrier. A group of calves eating from a trough.

Everything grey, dust, dark, dust. Buildings that looked like they had been derelict for decades or were for demolition, by UK standards. Birds nest wiring amongst them and then, a few inflatable toys, bright pink balloons, and big brightly coloured teddies wrapped up in cellophane.

It looked like a market had finished and was packing up. There was every type of transport; lorries, cars, rickshaws, oxen and cart, men with carts, and men with sacks on their heads. Men pulling carts, some with another man pushing, but some alone, with huge loads. A man carrying a huge load on his shoulders, wrapped, two leg ends and castors poked out, a chair or a table, he carried it up to the top of a ladder to a vehicle alone, then men at the top took it.

Dust, dark, dust, and traffic jams. A sign said: Men at work. Oh God yes. If ever that sign was valid, it was there. And everything within a thick smog. It seemed unbelievable how anyone survives, does this every day. How there’s any old people in Delhi.

A cycle rickshaw got caught on our rickshaw. Everyone around just shouted instead of helping. Usually touching of vehicles, even a scrape, does not result in shouting, not like in the UK. Maybe this was because it held up the traffic, and maybe it was a status thing, with bicycle rickshaws considered lower in the pecking order than auto rickshaws.

On previous night bus journey I/we were worried about needing a pee, this time, that was eclipsed by worrying about diaorriah. And then, Oh great, blood, my period started as well.

The bus depot was dusty, with rows of numbered stalls of travel agents, each with a desk and a tiny office with seats. To get to the toilets we had to go down a path to the side of one of the stalls, then along another. There were lots of men hanging about, and big dogs, and next to the toilets there was a big room with men sleeping on the floor, like a paying homeless shelter or very low cost accommodation. There was a hand washing sink outside but nothing inside the loos, just Indian style toilets which was fine, but no sinks like in the trains and not very clean. Even if I had taken a bottle of water in with me like I would on the train, I’d not be confident enough with hand hygiene to use my moon cup so cloth sanitary pads and a lungi would have to suffice.

On the bus a dreadlocked young woman across the aisle spread out a white lungi on the bus seat, it’s good to do for hygiene anyway. I did mine double layer just in case but my cloth sanitary pad didn’t let me down, as they say in the ads. The only thing it meant was not being sure if my pain, was urge to go to the loo, period pain, or hunger; we didn’t eat anything in the hours prior to the journey. But we managed the journey okay, we stopped for the loo and not eating beforehand worked.

We changed buses for the last part of the journey. Outside the window were bushy trees, mountains and desert. I saw a wall painted mauve, and another with delicate scalloped shapes cut out of the bricks, and then we were in Pushkar.

Thank you very much for reading

Keeping the faith

Tags

Anything is possible, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, escape the matrix, family, Greggs vegan sausage rolls, guilt and forgiveness, India, Narrowboat, Netflix, parents, Technology, Travel memoir, writing

Photo:  our boat

So adjusting back, or rather into as we’re in a new life, has felt harder than we anticipated this week.  Especially technology.  E.g. My husband applying for jobs and doing CVs on his phone…

My trusty tablet failed me (Samsung S3) about which I’d kept saying, you just need to last the year, then I’ll get back and set up WiFi and go back to using a laptop.  Well we didn’t set up WiFi straight away, I thought perhaps I’d manage by going down the pub or hot spotting to my husband’s phone, not wanting to get bogged down in lots of contracts etc…. plus I’d got used to working on my tablet and thought I’d just get a keyboard for it…

I only lost a few hours of work- I religiously email everything to myself as often as I get a chance- it was more the shock when it suddenly decided to not recognise my password. I’ll need to factory reset it when I can face doing that.

Anyway now we have WiFi, there was a special offer on and we got a super cheap deal.  Setting it up was hard, then resigning in to everything, computer doing updates, blah blah blah, all was stressful.  But once I had put on all my emailed work, seeing all my chapters laid out on a big screen was nice and I’m sure it will be much easier to work where I can flit between documents easily.

And we watched Netflix (Quicksand, recommended by a friend of my husband, and The Sarah Connor Chronicles from Google Play) on the laptop; it was like being in the cinema!  After a year of watching everything on a phone or at most a tablet, it was amazing, I couldn’t get over how big the writing was!

Boat news:  I am now fully competent at emptying the cassette toilet and filling the water tank. We got a second futon off the secondhand site, and went to collect it one evening, and went out for a curry.

We were excited to chat to Indian people, the place was called Delhi something, but the people were from Bangladesh and hadn’t been to India.  We had a nice chat anyway.  We decided we don’t need to go out to eat after a year of doing it all the time, but I did enjoy putting on earrings, a nice top and a jacket (I have turned into a bit of a slob on the boat); and I did feel really happy:  evidence, see below:

Big walks have continued, I have almost made it into the next village (I go a bit further each time). Greggs vegan sausage rolls have continued.  I have a correction to last week’s post; there were not anti vegan sausage roll protests outside Greggs, everyone just thought there was.  A group of protesters had been hemmed in by police, just happened to be outside a Greggs…

We went to Norfolk and got spoiled with a lovely dinner, use of a luxury shower and luxury smoothies, and went to an event for my son showcasing his work prior to his exhibition in New York.

In the year that I’ve been away he’s bonded with my nephew who is younger.  My son did his CV and my son and his friends all helped prep him for the interview- he just got his first job- as well as providing socialising and fun.  I also got to meet my son’s new girlfriend, his agent and some new friends, who were all lovely people.

My son also sent me a lovely Mother’s Day email filled with memories of good things he remembers me doing when he was a child and teenager, and I think we’ve both put the past behind us (he was a troubled teen and I couldn’t manage his behaviour, or live with him by the time he was eighteen; he is almost thirty now).

So all good there.

I saw my mum, she was restrained in not asking me a lot of questions and I seem to have, for now, created better boundaries. However, my son and nephew told me that she had said (re me going off to India,) that I had had a mental breakdown/mid life crisis, so I’ll probably need to stay strong to ensure that that relationship stays within certain limits.

Has anyone watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer?  Do you remember the episode that fans hate, where she is shown in a mental hospital, having doubts as to whether any of the being a slayer world is real.  It’s never fully explained- she has been spiked with poison and could be just having visions- which is why fans hate it.  ‘What’s more real,’ she says to her best friend Willow, ‘A scared young girl in a mental hospital, or some kind of superhero slayer and vampires?’

In the mental hospital, her mum keeps saying, ‘Believe in yourself, believe in yourself,’ meaning come back to there.  After a lot of conflict, Buffy chooses to say goodbye to her parents and go back into the Buffy world.

Photos:

We have a beautiful location

There is also a caravan and camping area.  See loo emptying point on the right by the bins, a short wheelbarrow walk from our boat!

Sheep opposite our boat

Beyond the caravan area, a pond and trees

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house left job decluttered almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Just arrived back in the UK and now living on a narrowboat.  Writing a book about everything…

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

The complicated stuff…

Tags

Alternative living, Enlightenment, family, India, Minimalism, Personal growth, relationships, Self realisation, Travel, Traveling, Travelling, Voluntary simplicity

These photographs were taken by my mum on a recent holiday.  Once a month or so she’ll send me a photo of something of interest with a few lines.  I do the same.

My son and I communicate mainly via messenger messages and occasional video calls.  We exchange news, everything’s going okay.  A couple of times recently he’s needed money and I’ve sent some.

It’s been a source of some anxiety and a fair amount of guilt that these relationships aren’t as close as, as what?  As some other people’s family relationships look from the outside?  As my idea of what these relationships should look like?  (except that I have no idea…..)  As what they were?  No, that had to change.

Anyway, in the midst of my painful illness I had a moment of clarity:  I realised suddenly:  Maybe they are happy with it being this way.

When I went to live and work in New Zealand for a year I had a similar experience of interpersonal conflict to that which I wrote about in my post ‘Every day beautiful, Every day shit,’  only without the self awareness to deal with it or take any responsibility for my part.  I emailed my mum, she emailed me back a long pep talk, and was probably quite concerned.  Even when things were going well, I used to phone her from New Zealand a lot.  I was thirty-five years old.

My son seems to do better the more independent he is from me, without me worrying about him.

I’ve written about my relationship with my son here:  This is life

Because of her own experience; property, security, inheritance were pillars for my mum.  Again due to her own experiences; as a child, teen and young woman I was conditioned to be anti-marriage, anti-men, anti-relationship.  Anti creating a world with another.

And yet that’s exactly what I’ve done with my husband and it’s amazing.  Right now, reading Krishnamurti, discussing ideas, being on a joint quest…

Here is a blog post summarising the life changing decisions we took to dismantle our previous lives and get to India here:  Orientation

And the impact it had on my relationship with my mother here:  The price of freedom

But what can I do, what is my part in fixing or accepting responsibility for these relationships?  Mother and son.  Past and present?

And what about our decisions?

I’ve been a big fan of the idea of illuminating the darkness, and taking responsibility for everything that’s ‘wrong’ in one’s life, for any sadness.
But I’ve realised that it’s also about accepting responsibility for my own happiness.

My husband and I discussed, Could we live with later thinking that we had gone crazy and regretting it and own it, the good and the bad?  We discussed the charge of, will we regret it? worst case scenarios and solutions, but still I say, It’s better than dying without having lived.

What, pregnant at eighteen, getting a career to support me and my son, getting a mortgage at thirty-five years old that would last until I was sixty, so that on my deathbed I’d say Well I couldn’t have done that (any of the exciting things- I imagine possibilities flitting through my mind on death), and then realising, Oh my God, you could have done!  You could have done!  You could have gone out and done x, and x, and x, there wasn’t anything to worry about.  There was never anything to worry about.  Your life is your life*, best message for all even with kids.

We had lunch and talked about keeping hold of this attitude to life once we return to the UK.  How?  Manage fear.  Don’t take life too seriously. Remember the people we’ve met travelling and how it works for them.  I wrote a post about some of them called Sab Kuch Milega (everything possible).

We’ve cemented voluntary simplicity minimalism and ideas about reducing consumerism, by having bought a boat to live on.  There’s no space to accumulate.  There’s a physical check on it!  The moorings are in a completely new area of the country.  There won’t be any old influences.  We’ve given ourselves the best chance we could.

So if the reason for doing all this is the pursuit of enlightenment and the definition of enlightenment is to see things as they really are…

Can you have light in some areas and not in others, just as some bits of life can be going ‘well’ and others ‘not so well’?

While we were in Pushkar my son had his teeth done.  It was such a good thing (after ten years of rotten teeth and poorly gums etc the problems are gone, and he quickly recovered and was so over the moon about facing his fears and it being resolved);  but at the same time it was so sad (that they ever got that bad, that it went on for so long, and that he had so many teeth removed).

I spent that night talking, processing, again, wishing to go to a place that can’t exist, where he’s an adult with no teeth problems, or to go back to his childhood and somehow do it all again correctly whatever it was that I did or didn’t do that could have altered it.  I don’t know what that would be and I don’t know if I could do it even if given a chance, so impossible, pointless….

Just days after, even hours after, he seemed okay, and a month later, it was as if nothing had happened at all.  It doesn’t escape my notice that he was able to finally take charge of himself while I was away.

 

The night I asked myself all these big questions about my family relationships, I dreamt about going round to my mum’s old house (a sixteenth century farmhouse that she’d lovingly restored and lived in for forty years (true)) as she was preparing to sell (true), and her pointing out memories, including a bit of plaster on the wall where a butterfly had landed and made a print (dream only!).  Maybe you could get someone to cast it, I said, in the dream.  Her so attached to bricks and mortar, making that house her whole life.  She regarded herself as custodian of the house, she put it above a relationship (she said she couldn’t marry or live with anyone as they would be able to claim half the house if they separated).

I thought about what I could have done differently on my part.  The thing would have been to keep separate, not share boyfriend details, not spend each holiday there, not run every decision by her, not do everything she said… yet at the same time it was hard as I was nineteen with a baby, twenty and single mum of a toddler…..  So maybe like with my son’s teeth there’s nothing that could have been done differently by me at that time.

And of course now there’s definitely nothing that can be done.  No time machine.  It- things, all things, can only be fixed in the present.

So exchanges of emails with photos, a few lines, and me living my life, in India, writing a book, discussing Krishnamurti and deepening my relationship with my husband, really it is the way things are.

For photographs of our trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Getting in touch
Comment on posts (comments are public)
Send a message via the Contact Box (private message via email)
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Part of a reflective review inspired by illness, our return to Kerala, and by being eight and a half months into our twelve month trip.

* Your life is your life, go all the way (Charles Bukowski)

For photographs of our trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Getting in touch
Comment on posts (comments are public)
Send a message via the Contact Box (private message via email)
Follow/send a message via my new Instagram: Sadie Wolf so_simple_so_amazing

Throwback Thursday

Tags

family, spirituality, stress

This is the first blog post I did.  Of course you never get to the end of a spiritual journey but here I had obviously reached some kind of plateau.  Other than that I was preoccupied with how I spent my time and with doing too much.  I hadn’t accepted as I do now the need to specialise and to have a committed routine for writing.  On a more personal note, although I tried for a while I have now let go of keeping in touch with people who either don’t keep in touch back or with whom there isn’t a real connection.  

Is fun the final frontier?  First published in May 2014

Is fun the final frontier?   So what do you do when you reach the end of a spiritual journey?  What next?  There’s this restless, ‘Is that it?’ feeling.  A crackling energy with no clear outlet.  It’s the way I feel when I haven’t been swimming for a few days.  I toy with using that energy for other things, for work, or conversation but there’s no bargaining to be had.  I need to go swimming and that’s that.  Even though occasionally I play or experiment with not doing it just to check that yes, it really is that important to me.  And I am especially tempted towards this type of experimentation now.   I should also add that as well as my spiritual journey, I also finished my spiritual memoir and not for the first time, am taking a little break from writing, or, as I have done before, experimenting with not doing it, to see what that feels like.  To check if it really is necessary, or am I okay without it and perhaps meant to be doing something else instead.

Except today I started writing this but this is more a documentation of the ‘what next’, rather than the start of a Grand Project.  And whereas before, when I have been miserable and conflicted when I experiment with not writing, right now I have been enjoying the freedom, the sense of space, the oodles of time and headspace and the increased connectivity and participation in the real world.

I look around and see that plenty of people are content, nay, happy with just going to work, exercising, cooking and seeing family.  I wonder if I could be too, although I know immediately that the answer to that question is no.  As my husband said when I discussed it with him, they are fulfilled by that and that’s fine, but if you are fulfilled by other things, that’s fine too.  So I am going to assume that that thing is writing and act accordingly.  No big new projects, no grand plans, just this, writing it up, one page at a time.

So, what next?  I enjoyed having a rest from my head and from my long and winding journey.  I had a massage and enjoyed being grounded in the physical.  But then I had a couple of weeks of just… drifting… getting myself into an almost bored state, thinking, wondering about my state of mind.  I stopped doing any homework for my healing training and I stopped exercising regularly.  I let myself eat a lot and put on some weight.  But I didn’t feel at all bad, even when last minute shopping for an outfit for a wedding reception and looking big.   I knew I was just doing temporary experiments and I was enjoying it to an extent, but without my rigid rather punishing regimes of exercise, healing practice and writing I began to feel my sense of direction was fast disintegrating.

But until I let go of everything, how can I let go and let God;  how can I know what to keep in my life and what to discard, unless I loosen my grip on all of it and entertain, even if just for a brief moment, the notion that nothing is forever?  Boredom breeds creativity, is one theory.   I considered writing a list, an inventory of everything in my life, all the family and the friends, the acquaintances, the resources, my work, the house, etc etc.  I even considered doing a SWOT analysis and a plan linked with regular reviews, just like I do for my department at work.  I thought, shouldn’t my life get at least as much attention as my job?   But life, at least a spiritual life, doesn’t roll like that.   And I want a spiritual life, I really do.

In the last few weeks I went to a family funeral.  It made me feel alive and it reminded me which bits of family I actually like to be with and want to see more of, as well as which people I feel guilty about not seeing.   It sounds so simple put like this:  I will call those people I like and go and see them.   No need for a big family do, just see them for lunch or a cup of tea.  I will call my sister and invite myself over and then diary it to do again two months later.  This is the only way I will see her, as she almost never calls me and I never have a strong enough urge to call her ‘naturally’.  Although I accept that we will probably never be close I feel bad about not seeing her, hence, the need to make a plan to do so.  Some family relationships are mostly based on duty but a cup of tea after work isn’t going to kill me, especially when I think of what other people do for their family members, even ones they don’t like.

So I have used a work type approach on some aspects and for others, a simple emotional one:  I like spending time with those people, I feel comfortable with them.  I want to see them more often than I have thus far.   It’s the balance between the planned and the unstructured, the disciplined scheduling and the intuitive, responsive spontaneity.  Between my plans and the cues and opportunities of the world around me.   So, what to plan and what to let unfold naturally?  Answer:  at every decision fork, simply be aware that there is that choice and then trust yourself to make it.  And if an area of life isn’t going too well, review it against these two ways of approaching it.

When I finished my memoir and came up for air, I noticed the house.  I finally got the bathroom redecorated after talking about it for months.  I began to notice other things that needed doing and got back into doing a bit more housework, honouring the home I am lucky enough to live in.   I still want to be a healer as much as ever, I still love the feeling of my hands heating* up if I just so much as think about it.  I was just on holiday, that’s all.   I will still swim and will probably begin to put a bit more effort in.  I am sure I will eat better and lose a little weight, naturally and without fuss or scales and not out of self loathing but out of sensible respect for health.

And my Love… well, if I had to imagine what he might want… it might be for me to be more content with where I am and not so restless and anxious for the next thing.  I said to him recently that it would be good to take drugs and it be just about fun and not about exploring the outer regions of my head and he said, Hallelujah I can’t wait for you to get there that’s what I’ve been like for ages.  I do feel fun flowing through me, especially when the kids are here; I feel like crawling around on all fours pretending to be a lion, or a gorilla, or making cat noises…   Is fun the final frontier?  I asked my husband.  He replied:  What else would there be?

He is reading a book about creating a simple life to hear God better; we debated that and came to the conclusion, as always, just live** life in your own way, in the way in which you feel closest to God.  For me:  in intense emotion, like after the funeral.  Flashes of happiness after doing a good day at work.  Being at a wedding reception and seeing all the people being so nice and friendly to my stepdaughter.  Driving home with her asleep in the passenger seat afterwards.  Seeing my son chat away to my husband and know that it was him he called when he needed some advice.  Just being quiet and alone in the house.  Life, basically.  And writing, knowing that I have this, this support system, that helps me work it all out as I go along…..

*My original Freudian slip typo said ‘hearting’ up.  Yes, heating up with love!

** And this one originally in another typo said ‘love’ rather than live, and I considered leaving it, as that is true too.

Postscript Re reading the above I note the following influences and experiences: a funeral, a book being read and discussed, attending a social event.  I needn’t have worried about my writing or about what to do next.  The lesson I take from the past few weeks is ‘participate in life and wait for inspiration to strike’.  

Recognising myself

Tags

Art, creativity, family, India, Travel, writing

Like coming off a motorway and finding yourself suddenly in a 30mph zone, leaving the demands, mental stimulation, pressures and deadlines of my job was bound to be an adjustment.  But it’s also forced me to face up to myself, unshielded from the work role, my thoughts and feelings no longer subsumed beneath the something else that is career.

Also, I like to get things done, or rather, I like things to be done so I write lists and worry about doing things, even if I don’t always get around to getting that much done.  I feel an urge to have things done as soon as possible, even if I don’t usually have the wherewithal or motivation to actually do them.  Plus, in the heat, you are lucky if you get one thing done a day.

So here I am, in paradise, worrying about getting things done.  The most important thing is the writing, so I’ll talk about that.  Obviously I have this blog, and that kind of takes care of itself.  I write when I have something to say, and post when it is finished.  In between I try, and mostly succeed, to not worry about it too much.  On top of that, I am writing a book with my husband about how we got here (decluttering, shedding attachments, mental leaps and matrix obstacles) and about what happens and what we learn about ourselves during our year in South East Asia.  So far so good, right?

We get up early, have a walk on the beach before it gets too hot, then retreat to the veranda/indoors until the evening, with the exception of possibly going out for lunch (which I managed yesterday, my first eaten-in-India masala dosa!) or to get snacks.  So plenty of time for writing, except that the heat slows everything down, plus I have only just got better from being ill.  But the biggest obstacle to it all, as usual, is my own mind.

I’ve been putting myself under pressure, thinking I have to write this book, try and get it published, finish chapter one as soon as I can so we can get onto chapter two about being in India before we’ve been here too long and forgotten things…  Thinking I have to make it a success, to fulfill the destiny of this adventure, to justify it, and to secure us financially.  So no pressure there then.  No wonder writing chapter one began to feel like a chore.  This demonstrates what a brain can do:  cause anxiety about nothing, when one is ensconced in paradise with nothing at all to worry about.

So after a grounding chat with my husband over breakfast this morning, this is where I am at now:  We have a boat to come back to in the UK, overheads are low so we both only need to work maybe three days a week each, I can sign up to agencies and just do whatever, a variety, so as not to get sucked back into the workplace matrix/politics.  That plan is fine.  As for this year, this is budgeted for, so I do not need to earn any money or worry about earning any money this year.  I can just…  wait for it…  relax and enjoy myself.  And write.  Write for fun, write when I want to, write how and what I want.  Write the book, write the blog.  Write without expectation or pressure.  Write nothing at all some days.

But mostly I will write, of course.  As Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat Pray Love, my long time personal bible) says, having a creative mind is like having a border collie for a pet.  If you don’t give it something to do, it will find itself something, and you may not like what it finds.  (This is probably why I have OCD, anxiety, etc etc etc.  There’s no easy answer though, because even when I do keep my mind occupied with writing, I am still capable of getting anxious about that.)

And of course I am still processing what it all means:  Selling the house, packing in my career, abandoning everything and just going off…  It’s not about going travelling, not really.  Or rather, the travelling is a tool.  It gets me away, breaks me away from my old life, from family, and when I return I will be living in a new area quite far away, far enough that no family will ever come and visit probably.

It’s not as if my family was bad.   It’s not as if my life was bad.  In fact it was good by any standard, and way, way better than I would have envisioned as a suicidal teenager or a freakish, teased child.  But, and here’s the but:  It wasn’t really me, or it wasn’t me any more, and the only way I could be me was to get right away from my family; to do something so big and so different that I would become unrecognisable, to them and even to myself.

 

My husband took two Tuk Tuk rides to find a pharmacy for me, and came back with strong antibiotics, gut flora and my thyroid meds, all over the counter, for around £5 altogether.  I started feeling better from the first tablet.  Antibiotics are good and strong here, I think.  My doctor in the UK could only give me three months’ worth of thyroid medication, so I have to buy it while I am out here.  I have a laminated copy of my prescription to keep with my UK issued meds (which are labelled with my name), to show when entering countries, especially Thailand.  I will keep my UK prescription meds for customs and buy and use local meds when I am inside a country for any length of time.

After drinking ginger, lemon and honey tea, and toast and honey whilst I was ill, now I am better, I am on ginger and hot water, mint tea, normal black tea, no honey or sugar in tea, no honey on toast, back to being a proper vegan and to taking care of my teeth.

My capabilities are returning:  I have gone from unable to even think about moving and the journey to Hampi, to talking about Vietnam, Japan, the whole trip.  I am inconsistent, emotional.  Yesterday evening we went out to dinner at a local, simpler place and had a good talk and reconnected.  Talking about capabilities, fears, managing my boom and bust cycle.

So it’s good, we are staying here until Saturday night, almost another week (so two weeks in Goa altogether- twelve nights in Agonda, eleven at this particular high up hut), so I can fully recuperate, get my strength back, and write chapter one (but in a joyful, no pressure kind of way, obviously!).

What I have been reading:

Only one thing, Kim Gordon’s (from Sonic Youth) autobiography.  My favourite bits, paraphrased:  I wanted to be an artist since I was five.  If you track back/observe you can see what it is you are meant to be doing.  (Visual) artists bemoaning that they can’t produce a piece of art that has the impact of a Kinks song.  A lot of artists wish they could produce work that had as much impact as a good song.  I don’t have the answer to that.

What I have been watching:

Only one thing, “Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise” on Netflix

 

Thank you very much for reading

Lots of love

Rachel

Instagram followingthebrownrabbit

 

The Price of Freedom

Tags

family, India, stress

To paraphrase The Rolling Stones, you can ask for what you want, but you can’t control exactly how what you have asked for will be given to you.

So here I am, at last, finally, an independent adult.  Not beholden to my mother.

My mother gave me quite a bit of financial help with buying my house.  She also bought a woodburner for the house.  So I felt bad about wanting to give up my stressful career, sell up, downsize, go travelling, and return to live somewhere smaller, cheaper, simpler and with lower overheads so I could do a less stressful job.  It didn’t feel like it was solely up to me in the way that it would have been had I always been totally financially independent.

So it was with trepidation that I raised it with her and it took me a few conversations before I was able to clearly articulate what it was I wanted to do and stick to it.

The first time I brought up the subject of selling the house, I offered to give her her money back.  She said no, she didn’t want it.  She actually said she didn’t want me selling the house to raise money for travelling, she would give me money instead, as a kind of advance on my inheritance.

I said I didn’t want her to do that, that I had had enough money already, but she was very forceful.  With my mother, large sums of money can be talked about as if they were nothing, and without really talking about it.

So I went off agreeing to consider renting out the house instead, even though that wasn’t what I wanted to do, and she never actually mentioned the idea of giving me travelling money again.

So again I plucked up the courage to say I was selling the house, in order to raise money for travelling, and because I didn’t want to be a landlord for a property in the UK whilst I was in India.

My mother insisted that we could do the trip on the rental income alone, but even if there were no gaps in tenants and no problems like non payment or ruined carpets, I knew we couldn’t.  Plus it was never just about going travelling, it was a whole life re-set that I wanted.

Time went by, the house went on the market in December, and completed early March.  Although I knew she wasn’t happy about me selling the house, I had thought she had accepted it.  I popped in for cups of tea, she asked a few polite questions about our travel plans and gave me a rucksack.

And then at 10:06 on Monday, after I had texted her to let her know we had booked our flights and were leaving for our year long trip to India the following Monday, she called and asked for her money back.

One of the many lessons of all this is to communicate one’s feelings and expectations clearly and openly, especially when it comes to money.  But I am sure I am not the only person who has difficulties in this area, especially when dealing with a very powerful family member.

So here I am, at last, finally, an independent adult.  Not beholden to my mother.  Not living near my mother (India aside, the boat is three hours away). Completely free, even of her influence.

I used to feel boggy, awkward, inauthentic in her company.  Unknown.  Whereas with my husband I feel completely safe and totally accepted. Known.

It shouldn’t be a competition or a choice but my mother has made her disapproval of my husband clear.  He, who has made me so happy, who makes me so happy.  The implication being that he is after my money (when we met I had a small starter home with a mortgage, he had a narrowboat, we both worked full time, both worked really hard, both fulfilled financial responsibilities to our children.  I also very much resent the implication that no one could love me just for myself).

Our friends observe that we make each other very, very happy. We share the same values.  We have supported each other with everything for almost a decade.

In the middle of this bombshell, my friend H, a lovely ray of sunshine, came to stay on the boat for the night.  It was just what we needed, and distracted us through the worst.  After H left, we went into Northampton, found somewhere to eat using the Happy Cow app, over ordered from a delicious range of yummy vegan food and treats, and caught our breath.

In spite of everything, I felt relieved, even happy.  We both began to see it as a potentially positive event in our lives.

Maybe we needed it to be just us, so that we can find out just what we’re capable of.

Sanguine.
I thought it meant unruffled, calm and philosophical.
We looked it up, actually it means optimistic and positive, especially in an apparently bad or difficult situation.  Better, more ‘evolved’ than I realised.  I asked us, can we move from calm and philosophical to cheerful and optimistic?

I regard us as being in the middle of the continuum.  If at one end is me coming back from India and being able to say to my mother, Wow, what was all that about, can we talk about it?

Then at the other end is as my husband said, some people would beg and plead, What have I done, why, why.  Or get angry, refuse to give the money back.  Or cry.  Well that’s good, I said, and laughed, because I am definitely not doing any of those things.

So yes, maybe we are currently somewhere in the middle, and if we can move from my definition to the dictionary definition of sanguine, then I shall be very pleased.

Oh yes and by the way, we are flying to India on Monday!

Mera naam Rachel hai

Aapase milakar khushee huee

Follow me on Instagram followingthebrownrabbit.

Thank you for reading.

PS I have had very limited internet access since moving onto the boat and lots of travel related admin to do when I have, so I haven’t been reading many blogs.  I have still been thinking of you all though, and I wish my fellow bloggers and readers well.  Thank you for all your support xxx

 

The Gift of Freedom

Tags

escape the matrix, family, Guilt, Mom guilt, The matrix

This Valentine’s my husband gave me something far more useful than flowers.

I could wallow forever in the dirty water where the fish won’t go.  I could never get up again.  I could say to myself, how can I live.  I could rake over and over the past, looking for a possible way things could have been made different.  I could cry forever and it wouldn’t change a thing.

I did everything I was able to do at the time.  I remember us both going to the dentist in New Zealand and me buying us electric toothbrushes to use out there as we’d left ours in the UK.  He was fifteen.  Everything was okay then, teeth wise.  But not long after, I stopped being able to make him do anything he didn’t want to do.

Since he’s been an adult, I have watched his teeth deteriorate, and no amount of encouragement from anyone in the family was able to persuade him to go to the dentist.  Realising nothing I said made any difference, for the last few years I have stopped saying anything in case it actually makes him even less likely to go, and also because I don’t want to spoil the times we have together.  But every now and again I’d think, am I being remiss, am I copping out, am I wasting opportunities…  all the time they are getting worse and worse, and I am not saying anything.

But of course he has mirrors, and eyes.  And as I write this I’m thinking, Oh my God, did we do this?  Did we make him dig his heels in more by trying to encourage him to visit the dentist?  But would a person really do that to themselves, not brush their teeth, not go to the dentist, just to be oppositional to their family?

I don’t talk about any of this to anyone but the night before Valentine’s Day my son messaged my husband and said he was finally ready to go through with the required treatment.  This will involve sedation, anaesthetic, and because things are so very far gone, implants.  So I ended up talking (and crying) about it until way past my bedtime and the conclusion I arrived at was that there is absolutely nothing whatsoever I can do.  A person needs to psych themselves up to face dentistry, blood tests or open heart surgery themselves, no one else can do it for them.  They need to be brave and they need to be a grown up.  My son is 28 years old and anxiety or no anxiety, the only thing I can do is think of him as an adult who is capable of facing this.

It is time for it to cease being my problem.

The next morning I felt a little better, like the day after an argument has blown over, still a little fragile, but recovering.  I still have CDs to go through so I put on The Jesus and Mary Chain album Stoned and Dethroned.  Track one is above.  It felt like the first day of the rest of my life.

Today, in an ironic twist I went to the dentist, which meant I got to sleep in and go into work late.  I came out into the warm sunshine and felt… happy.  I bought a birthday card and a box of vegan chocolates for my step grandma, and new spare cat name tags as they keep losing theirs.  Getting these things off my list and not having them to do on Saturday when we are already busy gave me a sense of elation out of all proportion.

Walking back through the town, thinking, yes, the post office, the chocolate shop, the pet shop, the cute alleyway, yes, they are all nice, just as dressing nicely for work is nice, but, it isn’t everything.  It should have been easier to walk away from our last place which was not pretty and was boring, but it’s been being in this lovely place that has inspired and propelled us to give up everything.  Is it because we needed to be happy in order to be able to dream, whereas before we were just surviving?

We have both been unwell for what seems like ages, colds etc, plus last-minute wobbles re vaccinations/not, water purification options, malaria, plus a long to do list, a house to clear and work to finish.

But as I said to my husband, I’d feel really good right now if I wasn’t feeling ill.  I had my bloods done and my doctor put my thyroxine up, which feels like it did when I first went on it, like the clouds clearing after a storm, everything shiny, wide awake, excited.

I said re our to do list, it seems as though simplifying our life is actually really complicated.  That’s because the matrix doesn’t want you to do it, my husband said.  The matrix wants everyone hooked into the complexity of everything, that is why it makes unhooking yourself feel so difficult.

See you on the other side.

I have set up an instagram account for when we are travelling followingthebrownrabbit

 

Thank you for reading.

 

This is life

Tags

family, Mom guilt, Parenting

 

So, family…  I have been processing some family/me stuff.  My son had some personal/life problems recently and called up my husband who went and supported him.  When I got home from work my husband told me all about it and said, you just need to phone him up and tell him you love him and that you are proud of him.  So I did (when I am out of my depth and don’t know what to do my husband gives good advice).

Then on Saturday we went to see a show that my son had curated and exhibited in.  All the artists have mental health problems.  My husband is at ease at these events, talking to the people from Rethink who sponsored the event and knowing just the right thing to say about my son’s work.  I think the work is good and I say so.  I know he has worked hard and that he’s come a long way and I recognise his achievements.

But I feel like I am expected to say more and that whatever I say isn’t enough.  I dislike the feeling of pressure on me, the fact that what I say is so weighted, so that my words seem to sound awkward.  I am not good at dealing with this stuff.  Why does it matter so much what I think, I’m just a human being, I don’t mean anything.   That’s not for you to say, you are his mother.  It’s for the child to come to that realisation themselves.  In the meantime, just be a parent, act the role, do what’s needed.  Sometimes you just have to give people what they need, and he just needs praise off his mum.  Why is it so hard to do that?  I noticed my mum was much less forthcoming than me; I was chatty, I gave out praise, even though I wasn’t as at ease as my husband.  On the way home we talked and talked until I worked out why I feel uncomfortable at these events.

The people from Rethink might judge me as a bad mother because my son has mental health problems.  He might even have spoken about the tumultuous teenage years and said critical things about me.  But mainly it’s this:

The whole event revolves around having mental health problems.  Everyone’s talking about it, it’s right there.  And there on the wall is a series of three of my son’s paintings.  Yes they are very good.  As my husband said you could see them in a gallery and you wouldn’t think they were out of place.

But they are unsettling/distressing.  The paragraph of text beside them explains that they are all about living with a mental health problem and what that feels like.  That’s fine when it is someone else.  But when it is your own child you are looking at something no parent wants to see.

Yes of course the exhibition is a great achievement, as are the paintings, but it means coming face to face with my child’s suffering.  I think this is even worse for my mum, because I think in some ways grandparents can get even more upset.  I noticed she didn’t even read the text.  I read it, to be polite and supportive, but it was sad.  And as the artist’s mother, it was really sad.

This post isn’t about self pity, it’s about playing detective.  So that’s why it’s hard, because it’s upsetting.  I am expected to give praise and be happy about his achievements, which I do and I am, whilst experiencing distress from having to literally look at his mental suffering.

So that all makes sense now.

That’s why it was so nice going round to his place the week before the exhibition.  He answered the door in a paint splattered t-shirt and a lungi, and showed me into the sitting room.  He and his girlfriend were working on several huge canvasses, sheets spread over the carpet, creating a makeshift studio.  It reminded me of the places I lived in during the late 80s.  For a moment, everything just looked exactly the way I would have wanted.

I am very pleased and amazed he got into art school, with no prior qualifications, it is a towering achievement.  But what I am most pleased about, even though it hasn’t been easy for him or us, is that he has followed his path.  Despite pressure from everyone, including me in the past, he has resolutely devoted himself to being an artist.

 

Thank you for reading.

You can’t take a cat in a backpack around India

Tags

Cats, family, Grief, Losing a pet, Pets

I suppose it was a good example of cosmic ordering, wish-fulfillment or just simple serendipity.

Just before Christmas I was ordering at the bar of my local pub.  It was around ten years ago.  I was with my old boyfriend.  My son, who is allergic to cats, had moved out.  The landlord said to me, so, what are you hoping to get for Christmas?  All I want for Christmas is two baby cats, I said, surprising myself, I didn’t actually think anyone was going to give me kittens for Christmas.  Quick as a flash, the landlord said, Peter over there’s looking for a home for two cats.  Peter’s son and daughter in law had moved back home, the daughter in law had two cats, Peter had dogs who chased cats, so the cats were currently living outside.

The next day I went to their house.  Halfway down the road a beautiful grey cat appeared.  As we came closer to each other, he gave a big meow and literally leapt into my arms.

But you can’t take a cat around India in a backpack, so this weekend I took them to their new home, my grandfather’s second wife, my step-grandma, I suppose she would be called.  She lives alone in a dear little house surrounded by gardens.  Her own cat died a few months ago.

I dealt with things in my usual way:  I filled a whole side of A4 with my ‘cat plan’, got super stressed out about finding exactly the right boxes (to make them nests that they could hide away in, with my blanket and pillow inside) and thinking about solving all the possible eventualities that could occur in the year we are away.  But all I really needed to do on Saturday was take them and their food over.  I stayed all the afternoon, stayed the night and stayed the whole of the following (yesterday) morning, long enough to see that they had both ventured out of their respective hiding places.  They didn’t use my boxes, the house was full of corners and hiding places.

Arriving home, no calling ‘puss puss’, no cat waiting for me by the car, seeing shapes and shadows everywhere that looked like cats.

When my dog was at the vets and I thought he was about to die- he did- I washed all the walls down where his waggy tail had splashed mud everywhere.  Not to forget, but thinking, if this is going to be my life, dog free, then I might as well bring it into existence now.  (Actually I cracked and got another dog two weeks’ later).  Now I have this strange urge to wash blankets and vacuum and have everything fluff free.

The last night we left the bedroom door open so the cats could sleep on the bed.  We don’t often do that because even though it always seems like it will be cute, they always end up disturbing us by washing loudly, sleeping on my pillow and on my hair and scratching my face until I lift up the blanket so that they can get into bed.  They did all of those things, and those behaviours were still annoying, even though it was our last night with them.  When people or animals die, people often beat themselves up, saying, if only I’d known it was going to be our last day, maybe I’d have appreciated them more, maybe I wouldn’t have got irritated…  But knowing didn’t seem to make that much difference.

Lying on the floor of the sitting room post yoga with my blanket over me, one of the cats kneading me and then settling down upon me, I concentrated hard on this being the last time, but I couldn’t enjoy it any more than I normally do.  I’ve had a rich experience with the cats, I’ve loved them and cuddled them and enjoyed being with them, so much so that I couldn’t amplify that experience any more just because it was the last evening.  Which I suppose is a good thing, it means there’s no regrets.  But it does bring me face to face with the bare facts:  Much more than decluttering old photographs, selling the house or giving away the furniture, more even than leaving friends and family for a year.  Dismantling the cats’ home and breaking up our little family:  This is what I am prepared to do to live the life I want.

I cooked dinner quietly, declining offers of help, and with no music or videos or blogs for distraction.  Sorting out the laundry, realising I didn’t need to worry about the cats sitting in it.  Same with leaving jumpers on the sofa or carrier bags lying about.  So sad.  Feeling kind of anxious, bent out of shape.  I had already been for a walk, already had a burst of creative energy and written loads of notes.  It was evening and cold and dark outside.  So I did what usually works in such circumstances and did some yoga whilst listening to music on YouTube.  It didn’t work that well, maybe the music was too sad.

I broke the five second rule last night (don’t get emotional about anything for longer than..) but it’s got to be okay to feel sad sometimes hasn’t it?

Ready and waiting for 2018

Tags

family, India, marriage, mental health, Travel

Like many people I am looking back on the year, to see how far I’ve come and to take stock of where I am right now.

This time last year was pretty wild.  I spent Christmas alone with my husband and we over indulged in everything, especially sex.  We would not have believed then that this would end up being the year that we started practising karezza and abstinence (well periods of abstinence anyway).

I had grand plans regarding work and my career, there’s a list in the back of my work diary that begins with ‘be the best at my job that I possibly can’ and included all sorts of personal and professional development plans that never really came to fruition as we got short staffed and other stuff demanded my attention.  I still developed though, I just did other things, and I have completely got over my regret that the progression I had planned didn’t happen.  I’ve never planned my career, and even if I had the chances are I would never have done everything or achieved everything I wanted to, stuff just happens as it does in life.

Still, I never would have thought that this was the year that I would be leaving not only this job but my career.  (It is my intention to burn my degree certificate and registration card when I leave, if I can be brave enough, as a show of faith that there’s something else out there for me.  If this sounds crazy, well it’s not as crazy as keeping your dead dog in a solid wood coffin that you drag from room to room so it can be with you while you watch television or do the dishes, as my mum’s neighbour does, and she’s out there, surviving.)

My relationship with my son is much better than it was this time last year:  as near as it can be to two adults who meet now and again and talk about their respective interests.  He is doing much better which makes everything easier, it is very painful for mothers to watch their children suffering, no matter how old they are.

My own mother is not totally on board with all my plans, even though I am not suffering and am in fact, when I am not worn out or run down as I have understandably been lately; very, very happy, and soon to be ecstatically excited- I can feel it brewing!

Apart from my wild teenage years I have not really gone against the opinions of my mother (except for having a baby at 19 and more recently getting married, and the tattoos…) but generally, I’ve gone to work, I’ve recycled, and on a day to day basis I’ve not done anything to provoke discord.  Which is why this is probably quite hard for both of us, but the sooner it’s past the point of no return, the better.

I was thinking this morning, when we are teenagers and can’t wait to leave home and be free of our parents, we have no idea that we’ll still be under their power and influence in our forties and beyond, not all of us, but definitely some of us.

I have photographed all our furniture and sent the pictures to friends to see if they want any of it, before the man who is buying the house comes round to decide if he wants anything.  Anything left is going to go to charity.  Tomorrow we are tackling the sheds and garage and making trips to the dump, as long as it isn’t raining.

I have also spent some time thinking about India.  I have written down the names of places we want to go, some for an extended period of time, some just passing through or for a brief stay, others in between, with a rough route planned whilst knowing we will be open and flexible to going with the flow when we actually get there.  I am happy that two hill stations that a friend recommended are in Tamil Nadu, where we want to spend a lot of time.  I am a little apprehensive about the heat*, so knowing about them gives me reassurance.  Plus they look beautiful! – Ooty and Kodaikanal.

*Mind you, I’m not doing so well in the cold of the English winter, yesterday we had all the heaters and about seven layers of clothes on but it wasn’t until the woodburner was roaring that we finally got warm.  Just as long as we didn’t venture outside…