Choices are very scary.
I’ve spent the last week trying to recover my energies** whilst at the same time using them up on sorting the house out. I’ve been concentrating on raising my frequency, eating well, eating vegetables from above ground, sleeping in separate beds, no sex at all, no alcohol etc.
Getting ready for new carpets coming and estate agents photographs a week from now. It’s easy (for me) to get totally obsessive and exhausted, seeing more and more cleaning and painting that could be done whilst knowing that I can’t/won’t do it all. At least this time I have stopped and rested at certain points, after I was tired and achey but before I was totally exhausted or in actual pain. Some of it I’ve enjoyed, and certainly have enjoyed the results of, such as cleaning the windows (especially satisfying if not done very often!) and sometimes I have looked forward to doing things off the list with tomorrow’s new energy.
But then I got tired and had a meltdown over the skirting boards. I realised I should have painted the skirting board before the carpet came. When I did the painting mostly I just painted the walls and ignored the skirting boards. Now, I see that they could do with being done. Anyway, I did that room quickly with one coat and it is fine now, I know it only needs to look okay for the photos and then the buyers will paint over it all anyway. But for a few hours I beat myself up: why didn’t I just do all the skirting boards at the same time as the walls. Why didn’t I notice they needed doing before the carpet came? Why do I prioritise the wrong tasks. What’s wrong with me, I’m such an idiot.
My mum spent years thinking about it then a year seriously getting her house ready to sell. In the last few weeks and months she worked on it from six am until midnight, DIY, painting, styling, as well as sorting out forty years of accumulated belongings. She was almost seventy. Then she moved into her new place and within a few months it’s all painted and perfectly styled. I, meanwhile, find my shoulder aches from a couple of days of window and door cleaning, even with rests. And as fast as one thing gets clean more stuff needs doing or the big stuff gets done but there’s still the ordinary stuff to do. I get overwhelmed by DIY and big chores, always have. Having a mother who excels at all that, who built her house herself, is a lot to live up to. It’s impossible to live up to. And then I remind myself that lots of people don’t do any of their own decorating. They pay a professional, or they leave it undone because they work full time, because their free time is precious, or just because they don’t want to do it.
I’ve noticed that classic spaced out stressed feeling, which I haven’t felt for a while. I dropped everything and went for a walk across the fields, because I remembered that being helpful. I’ve also felt excited; wide awake and staying up late then lying in bed feeling wide awake and happy. I haven’t felt this off balance for a while but I’ve been continuing on the path. I told my boss and told my team at work today, to make it real. Feeling a bit scared about everything, but totally sure about selling the house, totally sure about going travelling, and almost totally sure about buying a boat as a base/to live on when we come back. Trying to raise frequency in order to make decisions from the best place- we are going to see the boat again on Saturday.
Maybe a boat will be better for me, less to clean? But you have to be really tidy or else in such a small space the mess looms much larger! Neither of us are super tidy and will we really be any different anywhere else?
A few weeks ago, on a whim, I looked at boats, and found one that was ideal. A boat is at least capsule, simple living and more unplugged than our current situation.
This whole thing started with the idea of going off to India, or travelling the world, but for me it’s not really about travelling per se, it’s about testing my long felt urge to trust-fall into the universe, to let go my fingertips from the cliff face and fall into the unknown. Mainly, it is about freedom; about realising where I am, what I have, and therefore what I am able to do- with a bit of guts and imagination. The thought of just going off for a while with no plan other than to go travelling and keep writing, is, well… The thought triggers a thrilling, glittery feeling inside me.
It means that at least for a while, I could imagine/believe that this was my life, travelling and blogging. And for a year or even two, I believe it can be. But what next, what afterwards? I could get a permanent job again, I could do temporary work. We could somehow maybe build a life that splits between the two, periods in England earning money, periods in South East Asia. I don’t want to have a life changing experience and then come back to the same life.
If we buy the boat we have something to come back to. We can even live on it for a few weeks before we go, thereby bringing the future into the now and beginning our new life right now, rather than waiting until we get back. It would also be taking action rather than just seeing what happens/leaving it up to our future selves to decide what it is we are going to do. It’s lovely, in a great location and available now. My reservations- people say don’t plan on top of plans; are we tying ourselves down, limiting our horizons, preventing as yet unknown opportunities from arising and being taken up, such buying a bar in Thailand or opening a cat sanctuary in Vietnam. (I am not really going to do either if those two things).
I know I am fortunate to be able to be in this position but I am still finding it very scary. Giving up a good job, giving up a nice house, for something smaller and as yet unknown, possibly a small boat; well I suppose it is because of the conditioning that this is difficult. And I suppose that’s also why it would be good to do it..
Just when I think I have put the past behind me, I go round my mum’s yesterday and out of the blue she says, you remember x don’t you, he was convicted of the rape of two twelve year old girls and went to prison for two years. I met him when I was fifteen, he was thirty, me and my best friend and my boyfriend, both older than me, used to go and see him, he used to invite us in to talk to him whilst he was in the bath. We just thought it was funny/weird. He also took arty photographs of us, clothed. He was one of my mum’s lodgers when I was about sixteen. When I was seventeen or eighteen and had left home and was living in a caravan, he came round. I think he had tried to get me into bed before but I didn’t fancy him. I thought he was too old. Anyway, he came round during the day and got into bed with me and just touched me in one place, one square centimetre. I did want him to stop but my body just let him do it, and I had an orgasm whilst not fancying him, not kissing, not cuddling, it felt very weird.
My mum said yesterday, he was in the house with you and your sister. I said, I was older, and I am sure my sister would have said something. She seemed happy with that. One lodger used to pay for my sister’s horse riding lessons and take her out. Another (the one from my flashbacks) did the same for me. The 1970s were a very strange time.
*a book from the 1970s. That decade wasn’t all bad.
**lots and lots of sex, and lots and lots of orgasms whilst on holiday
Rachel 