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Wind in the Chimney
The hollow howl buffeting down the stone chimney tells me the winds have arrived. Ripping the last leaves from thin branches, whipping shadows through the dark windows where moonlight flashes briefly from behind scudding clouds. I love the sound, that almost boom, the dull echo as the air rattles down through the fireplace, squeezing through the grates, whistling and wheezing. That wild energy finding its way into the old house, as always.
There is a background roar down the valley, too. In the inky darkness, that deep, primal rumble as the gale winds career from valley side to valley side, funnelled around slalom corners formed by the hillsides and hitting our house head on. Wild nights. I need this.
I find it easy to slip into that world of deadlines, of work, of the relentless rejection of the academic treadmill. Old habits die hard and patterns repeat, but I can hold myself now, with the help of those around me who remind me that real life isn’t hours on the screen or judgement by unseen peers. It’s this gale, it’s the rain battering the window, its that wild energy finding its way through every crack and hole in old stone. It’s been a hard week for sure, and I feel myself sinking, sleeping, hiding away. But in darkness is always softness, in these four walls is sanctuary, in the out breath is healing and peace and centring. As the gale rages outside, I remember to let that wild wind find its way to me, too.
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Deep fear and feeling
Wrapped in four different blankets, my hoodie pulled up over my thinning hair, I feel the thud thud thud of my heart deep within. Pumping oxygen to muscles primed to fight or flight, the whisper of shallow breath cooling my lips, pupils expanding in the dim light. But tonight is relaxed, a soft end to a weekend, a day off the following day, a cocoon of ambient lighting, deep bass, tea and company. Yet this insidious, deep, ever-present fear underlines every moment. Snaking its way up through my throat, a long, shaky exhale not enough to disperse the cortisol that’s been flooding this body for as long as I can remember.
Rationally, I don’t know what it is. That constant fear that I am In Trouble, that somehow I will get Found Out, but honestly, what for, I have no idea. For being wrong. For not being enough. For existing. For all this and more, the things I can’t put into words, things that are at most a fleeting sound, a glimpse, a shadow in the back of my mind. All the things that spoke truth to me, whilst I switched myself into whoever I was talking to at the time. A way to protect something that I have no name for.
Weirdly, the more I make peace with myself, the more this feeling seems to rise and start to stick around. I’m feeling the most confident, the most at peace that I have felt, maybe ever. And yet, simultaneously, I feel the most fear, too. The more I relax into myself, the more this thing inside me twists and turns and raises terror that has me screaming in my sleep. What is it, this deep fear? Am I creating space for it, the more I let go?
I think it needs to come out, whatever this anxiety is. It needs to be felt. This journey of final understanding, four decades in the making, has pushed and squashed fear down, leaving an underlying dread that coloured my days but that I thought was normal. I ignored it, I didn’t want to pay it attention. Now, letting go, expanding into myself, colouring in blankness, peeling back layers, existing in a sort of lightness – there is more space to hear. Bubbles rise to the surface, things long buried, things shouting to be heard. And so I let it expand, this deep fear, this beating heart. Monsters that chase me at night, a world that’s louder than I remember, an awareness that is highly alert for danger, for judgement, for discovery. I need to feel it, I know it. As unpleasant as it is, I think the smallness of life right now is a step forward.
My world has shrunk, as I’ve said before. But this time it is my world, and I’m real, and true, and tentative. This deep fear is keeping me small, and at the same time, keeping me safe. This shiny new me, uncovered, a small smile playing on lips, a new lightness of step. It has a purpose, and it deserves to be felt in all the panic, all the wide eyes and racing mind. The shaking hands, the deep, inexplicable terror. It hurts and it heals, little by little.
So, with curiosity, trepidation, and honestly a little resignation, I walk alongside the fear. To hear what was underneath all these years, to begin to understand and then to let it go. In all is waves. In all is a cycle. Seasons rise and fall, and this will fall too, in time.
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In all things
Samhain approaches, that time of held breath, liminality, not quite here but not quite there, either. A time where it is said that movement is easier between worlds, where permeability reigns, fluid, soft, grasping. Timeweavers dance across realities, journeys start and end from both sides of the veil. For those who listen, for those who speak a language that is never heard, for those who tiptoe into the night.
I think a lot about balance this time of year. Where everything has seemed either/or, it is now blurred. Surety is shifting and my mind feels it stronger than ever. For a brain where everything smudges together all of the time, coloured by layers of possibility and thumbprints scattered across synapses, this time of year is a time where I feel myself melt into the season, into the landscape. Into the energies that have carried me along this far.
I try and strive for balance, but balance is effort. It takes planning, muscle, tension to exist on that thin line between too much and not enough. Between light and dark. In the long, looping cycles of life, balance is always off. Save for a few pinpoints hit, in my experience, entirely by accident, I am always pulled one way or another. Immersed in joy, or immersed in apathy, or all of the minute divisions in between. Feeling each moment in my universe soul, with all parts of my being, beginning, end and the times that have no measure. Why should we strive to counter moments with their opposites? Why is the goal a perfect symmetry of experience?
The cycle of the year waxes and wanes with regularity, and I see the balance in light and dark, in summer and winter, in the eternal battle between oak and holly. But what for those who walk one side or the other? For those who are pulled by the deep, relentless energy of everything, everywhere. There is not just this, or that, or a perfect divide. Minds are messy, lives are messy. And mess is wonderful, relentless, and full of potential.
I’m embracing mess and the possibility that ‘unbalance’ is where I naturally come to rest. A mix of quiet and stimulation hasn’t really worked out for me. In fact, my mental rest is in doing, in movement, in beats and thrums. My brain sings to itself, and when left in silence creates its own relentless cacophony of colour, of half formed thoughts, feelings, glimpses and fizzing connection, as those who also belong to the tribe called ADHD will well attest. This year has brought introspection. It’s taken a while for things to settle but this year seems to have been the year of ‘what if’? And so, in celebration of this lightness of spirit, of this curiosity, just maybe, although the earth turns steadily, I entertain the idea of humming to a different frequency. A kind of weighted balance, one side rising higher than the other. Do I need to bring more balance into my life – or do I actually need less?
I’ve tried to incorporate more down-time this year, as university pressure mounts and my workload increases. But as much as I’ve embraced rest, internet-free time and stillness, I’ve not found myself feeling better. In fact, what seems to be helping is accepting the vibrancy that doing brings. I’m realising it’s not a balance between busyness and rest that helps me process and restore. It’s busyness…. and more busyness. Busyness in a different form. Tactile movement, creating, foraging, walking, making. Moving. Learning. Testing out just how much additional stimulation this ADHD brain needs to function optimally, and finding fun ways to embrace that. I’ve spent the last decade consciously making myself stop, slow, think and rest, sometimes forced by illness, sometimes in choice. A time of stillness to facilitate that deep, deep soul processing, and I needed it, viscerally, truly. Now I’m at a place where experimentation seems more achievable. And so, as the nights draw in, I feel this is actually a time for more. Where I’d usually be turning to hibernation, I feel drawn to exploration, instead. More, but different. Let’s see where it leads.
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Gardening and consistency
I love the garden, but I, and I am quite giddy with delight as I say this, I have come to realise I am not a fan of the actual gardening. Ha! What a journey, to be able to speak a realisation about myself. What a tentative delight it is!It should come as no surprise that I’ve battled with this, coming from a large family of green-fingered garden geniuses, resplendent in their piles of vegetables and home-grown preserves, borders of jewel-like flowers growing happily to the sky. I have tried, I really have. I love the idea of gardening. I want to love it, I really do. I’ve even almost convinced myself, whilst putting endless seeds in the soil, watering that little bit of hope that dark, cold days will soon pass and shoots will spill forth from the ground. But no. Inevitably, hardly anything sprouts. The things that do get eaten immediately by supersnails (even super-hot chillies, which only serve to make the snails grow stronger and more filled with rage and teeth). If something progresses to getting actually planted in the ground, it will, by some miracle of nature, become either grass or a dandelion. No, I don’t know how, either.
So, the last few years, as I have played with the dawning realisation that this is just not for me, I’ve let the garden just grow by itself, madly, wildly, full of weeds and yes, full of grass, full of dandelions, full of THINGS. I’ve embraced this funny, rising feeling of joy and freedom, until it spills from my lips in a wild giggle, watching shieldbugs lay eggs on a huge rambling rose that’s twined itself up the holly tree and yelling I DON’T CARE and feeling all kinds of wonderful. Because not caring has given something to the wild. Nature holds me now. The garden is its own beast.
I don’t care that couch grass is taking over the driveway. I don’t care that teasels spring from cracks in the paving, making bare-legged wandering a veritable gauntlet. I don’t care that the same teasels have created a huge, towering field for themselves in what used to be the veg patch. I don’t care that dandelions run rampant and brambles wander enthusiastically around the perimeter, eyeing up the rest of the garden with pure intent. Occasionally we’ll get a little enthusiastic and hack a path so the postie can still get through to the letterbox without being absorbed into a particularly enthusiastic clump of crocosmia. But in true metaphoric style, letting it all go has exploded into more than we ever imagined. The new, wild friends who have moved in to live in this little patch of space with us have shown us that this earth really knows best. “Stop interfering, let us get on with it!” shout the spiders spinning silk between teasel heads. “Thanks for the flowers!” buzz the fluffy bees, sharing nectar with wasps, flies, hoverflies and moths. Voles speedrun through the undergrowth. Frogs rustle in patches of wilderness.
Year by year, things come and go and rise and fall. Last year was borage, this year is teasels. Last year was foxes, this year, badgers. Giant dragonflies pop in over the fence, flitting their diamond wings and glistening all sorts of metallic colours. It’s great. The house becomes more and more permeable with time. Attic bees. Bats. Birds. Mice in the walls. Squirrels in the eaves. Moss. Ivy trying its very best to enter the windows and come and live indoors, thank you very much. Spiders living their dramatic, leggy lives in dark corners, and come August and September, at speed across the living room floor.
Instead of gardening, I wander around and pick things from the hedge that look tasty. Huge blackberries (fighting the nettles to get to the best ones). Wild strawberries, hiding under leaves tumbling from stone walls, super sweet and shiny red. Rosehips from the aforementioned climber, the angriest plant in the garden, seemingly putting specific effort into spiking your skin wherever possible. Boundless oregano, self-seeded and abundant. This is what I like. Dipping in and out, sharing the harvest with our wild friends.
I wondered why gardening is so hard. Looking back over my years of failed attempts, it seems kind of obvious now. Gardening takes consistency. It takes sustained effort. It takes planning and willpower and doing things for no immediate reward. You are definitely in it for the long haul. A lot of work, for a distant, future reward. All of these things are the exact opposite of how my brain works. No wonder I’m tapping out.
The big thing was that I felt like I should like gardening. Thousands of people find solace, support, community, meaning in tending a garden. I know myself that spending time here is healing. But there is also pressure for me. I tried and tried, and when my anxiety got really bad, even waiting until dark to run out to quickly try and do something in the garden whilst no one else was out. But I didn’t get better at gardening. I didn’t suddenly find a seam of joy, or a sense of relaxation. I didn’t get de-stressed, I got more stressed. The garden got ‘messier’ and I got more and more overwhelmed. Why couldn’t I do this?
It all makes sense now, to this brain built for rummaging hedgerows in autumn for the best berries, not for tilling and caring for those berries in the preceding months. This brain built for variety, quick interest and a little chaos, not planting plans, waiting for things to grow, and then remembering to plant them in bigger pots. It’s just not me. Maybe one day in the future some miracle will descend upon me and I’ll gaze at the garden in a golden haze of understanding, the joy of plantsmanship suddenly realised, planting whole crops of broad beans that never get rust or destroyed by hungry molluscs. Maybe one day I’ll actually be able to grow one entire flower from a seed. Or even from a plug and grow. Here’s hoping.
But for now, I just scatter care to the wind. It’s one of the first things I’ve solidly learned about myself, and being able to speak it out is such a thrill. From decades of not really knowing who I am, to being able to say I don’t think this is for me. Yes, I’ll shove a garlic in the ground and be surprised by it again come summer solstice. I might fling some bee mix at a patch of earth, give it precisely one watering can and cross my fingers. I might snip a particularly enthusiastic bramble now and again, or get into a fight with the angry rose bush. But that’s about it for me. I’m happy with that.
Like I say, maybe it’ll change in the future. I’ve grown things before, in a rented house with lovely soil and a proper veg patch, and loved eating beetroot straight from the ground, growing a cabbage bigger than the sink and picking bowl after bowl of warm, ripe strawberries. Someone else had spent years improving the soil. Someone else planted the strawberry patch. A gardener was included with the rent to tidy up and sort the lawn. Left to myself, I fully imagine that huge lawn would have taken on a wild tinge, too. So we will see. For now, I’ll wander on into the wilderness, and see what next year holds.
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Shrinking
My world is small these days. The long commutes and drives, the exploration, the excitement for new places and new things faded away, as over a decade or so an anxiety and dread grew stronger with every passing year. I’ve watched as long commutes were replaced by shorter journeys. Long wanders from the front door were replaced by driving to the wild moors, away from people. The contraction accelerated in recent years. Panic in familiar places. Dread of driving. Inability to go outside in the garden when neighbours were in theirs. An all-consuming anxiety. The grass grew long and I imprisoned myself, pacing, restless, missing the wild freedom I needed, sitting instead on the sofa in our dark stone house, relentlessly scrolling. Hoping to escape via a screen into a world that was just outside my window. I grew quiet. I grew numb. The last year, even the moorland faded from my reach. My car broken, anxiety too great to catch a bus. Cancelled and ignored plans. An invisible forcefield across the driveway gate that I just could not cross. After a long retreat of the tide, over all the years, I had finally reached a singularity. Stasis. Immoveable.
I fought and fought it but it still consumed me. Some deep, primal fear of perception, of judgement, a need for invisibility, a rage against all I used to do and just could not propel myself to do any more. I wanted to escape reality and scrolled incessantly. Screaming in silence, in under-stimulation, a prison of forced apathy for this neurodivergent brain.
But amongst it, finally, I started to find compassion. A small spark where I thought it would never end. Eventual beginnings of neurodivergent understanding took a while to land, initially numb, then growing, seismic pulses reaching back over the decades. I lay still and I felt them wash over me, colouring childhood memories with understanding, filling in blanks across these forty-plus years. A delayed grief for the death of my dad, layers upon layers of confusion, questions, slowly softened by the man who appears in my dreams, finally whole and here. The instability of the pandemic, the raw anger that still ricochets through us all, the pain, mass trauma, but business as usual. The ghostly imprint of a distant job that left me shell-shocked, with flashbacks, nightmares and avoidance that continue to this day, whilst huge chunks of that time are missing from memory. This body has felt it all. This body still feels it all. This body needed to still, and process, and hide away for a while. Perhaps this was its way. Perhaps this was needed. In stillness, I began to work through it all, relentlessly, fiercely and deeply supported by my husband, my only safe place, the person who helps me come back from it all, always. Contained in these four walls, a beginning, and an end.
So I continue my tiny, comfortable journeys – to university, to the shop, occasionally for a coffee in the neighbouring village. Familiar visits for holidays. Tiny movements. The moors wait, visible from where I sit in the garden, proud that I can hear a neighbours’ party and still sit outside, something I would have hidden from a few months ago. The difference now is that I know I will walk them again. The momentum is building, swelling, quietly but strong. This forty-second year is teaching me, and I am learning anew. A new understanding and trust that my world will expand again once more, in time. Tentatively feeling into my brain, into my soul, slowly discovering how to act on the things buried within. Enjoying bubbles of colour rising to the surface, long buried under layers of being countless versions of someone who was never actually myself. With this, the anxiety is receding. My soul, strengthening, not as afraid to be seen these days. The curiosity and hum of life pulling me back.
With my little broken car booked into a garage, I hope small wheels will soon carry me in return to those familiar places. Revisiting spirits of stream, grass and rock. Fingers tracing leaf fossils older than the land on which we walk. A slow re-immersion, a new season of exploration, following deer-trods and footprints once more. This anxiety, this shrinking has taught me much. How much I value the wild expanses and deserted moorlands. How much I need to feel wind on my skin, to breathe sharply in ice-cold water, to follow colours and move my body and drown in sounds. To explore this land, create familiarity once more. This house has held me, even when I felt the walls were closing in around me, and I look at it with new eyes. The jumbly, messy garden with its riot of life living here with us. The stone walls, once under oceans, permeable, providing shelter for us alongside a cacophony of other life existing on this little patch of land, in this minute sliver of time.
The deep knowledge that everything moves in cycles. My deep thaw is starting, even as the season turns to autumn here. Maybe this is my planting time, those few months before Samhain. New beginnings. New paths to tread. Slowly, I step outside the gate.
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Maybe it will all be ok
I feel as though my whole life was building up to this. Nothing special, nothing momentous. No news, no occasion. Just a hint of knowing, of acceptance, a beginning in this middle life.
I turned 42 this summer. A true mid-life age, but I feel everything else was a beginning, a prelude. Wild rides, highs and lows, not knowing who I am, swimming through decades. But it is here I am starting to come ashore. Two-score and two. That many years to begin to say, I am her, I like that, I am good at this. To expand into a body and soul more solid than it has ever felt before. To voice that which I didn’t dare before. To feel tentative joy in experience. To watch the glitter of that August-dry grass in the breeze and feel that same sway in the wind, the joy of movement, the embrace of my place in the web of it all.
My hair is falling out in clumps, probably hormones, probably the final year of the PhD, but with the shedding comes a thought of letting go, of leaving those memories locked in keratin and colour behind. Hanging from branches, pulled from hairbrushes, carried away in water flow. I keep a lock, pandemic hair, curled in a small basket, waiting for some magick to show itself, the time to be right to throw it to the wind or sea, or maybe stay with dark earth in silence. Tiny, silver-white hairs begin to regrow in place of long, red strands. I stare at them in amazement, wonder that I got this far, the emergence of a new chapter. Older me squeezes the hand of my younger self somewhere in another dimension of my mind, a few layers deep. She is healing, slowly, slowly. She is beginning to see the path. Neither of us know where we tread in coming years, but we get there, together.
That peach August sun picks out diamonds in the parched grasses surrounding the garden. The flags glow warm underfoot, skin sinking deliciously into the heat. The breeze tickles branches, glorious days. Rosehips glow red, blackberries shine that deep purple-black in the hedge. Harvest is early, this year, pushed by the heat of this dry, bright summer. These are my days, tiptoe-long and layered. Now I allow myself to stretch deep into the multi-layered love of the season, embracing the true depth of feeling for maybe the first time. Not just love for the long days, but each feeling is faceted, past and future, place and expansion, light and dark, what is and will be. Layers and layers, as always.
Two-score and two. The August exhale, the ripening of a harvest sown unknowingly all those years ago, fighting tooth and nail against storms, against identity, against myself. Now, as age spots and wrinkles begin to adorn my skin, I am beginning to understand. With each white hair, I feel love. With each darker spot on my hands, I smile. With new lines on my face, I gaze in wonder. It took a while to get here, but I wouldn’t change it. 42, but I feel I may begin to know myself for the first time ever. I am still discovering, settling, testing. But it feels different. In place of dread, a hint of a smile plays on my lips. Maybe it will all be ok.
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Pride, feelings and following bees
It’s been a hectic week. Now, here at the end of it, listening to the light patter of rain on the conservatory roof, I’m processing it all. That’s not to say it’s been a bad week. In fact, it’s been really enjoyable, just busy, and long, and a little overwhelming.I was always taught that pride comes before a fall. It’s weird how deeply those sayings can stick with us through life, negating any sense of achievement, instilling in us the belief that feeling good about things we’ve done is wrong, and we’d better be prepared for the ‘something bad’ that will inevitably follow. As part of this long journey of relearning, it’s affirming to feel pride in the things I’ve done. But at the same time, it’s also challenging, with a tinge of sadness and grief, too. But I’ve achieved some things this week so I’m tentatively expanding into that feeling of accomplishment, and starting to learn to let go of the underlying feeling of dread that it will all go wrong soon. It’s not bad to feel proud, and slowly, I allow myself a little smile of happiness, a little warmth kindled inside my soul.
The dry weather and flowering teasels have brought all sorts of wildlife into the garden for a drink of nectar. Voles rustle in the undergrowth, whilst huge butterflies and a rambling assortment of bees buzz happily between those spiky teasel heads, putting their long tongues into the flowers and getting confused when another bee wants to drink from the same place. I love them. I’ve spent hours just sitting in the sun, watching, feeling my heart soar and sharing the space with the beating thrum of life at the summer peak.
It’s a joy that is limitless. Watching a new butterfly flit into the garden, seeing a frog pop its head up from the depths of the pond, getting buzzed by bats at dusk. It’s hard to explain but my soul truly lifts in those moments. The feeling is intoxicating, the feeling of life, of some energy beating through the land, of the full tide of living, breathing, just existing swelling all around. I’m re-learning that it’s ok to lose myself in that overwhelming, full colour, neurodivergent soup of feeling and thoughts and swirling experience. There’s no ‘should‘ or ‘don’t‘ or ‘”stop saying wow!“‘. Some part of me is crumbling and softening, a little, and I am wide-eyed and wonderous at it all. I flung open the conservatory doors earlier and breathed in the petrichor of the grey morning, in a moment that was almost euphoric. Time and colour and smell and joy, just bursting in that one breath, rising from my feet to the top of my head and out, out into the universe. The prickles on my skin where raindrops patter on the rooftop, almost tickling, shivering through my veins. The shine of a leaf that brings glitter to my soul. Following bees around the garden, stopping where they stop, watching them feed and buzz and bumble and fuzz. A line of ants, triggering memories of sunny holidays, following them to a crack in the ground, intently focused.
It’s an overwhelming process, this letting go. I’ve heard of it as unmasking and I get that description, but I feel it’s something bigger, the understanding. That little jolt where it all makes sense, and the enormity of the road ahead. But in this there is joy, and peace, and the freedom now to follow the endless curiosity that didn’t have a voice before. There is pride, and a fierceness, and wonder at the depth of it all.
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Winter, Hibernation and Answers in the Dark
Winter, Hibernation and Answers in the Dark
As the days darken and the leaves fall slowly to the ground, we slow. As those crisp autumn colours mute and fade to that deep brown, tinged with those sparkling diamonds of frost, it is time to settle. As deadlines ramp up before the winter holidays, as shops open longer and fill themselves with bright colours, listen to that quiet pull in the opposite direction. To sit on freezing ground, to breathe in thin, sharp air, and feel the insistent tug towards the dark. Peeling layers away, finding truth hiding in that instinctual part of ourselves, that quiet tide of back and forth, back and forth that roots us with a strength beyond knowledge. To walk the way of the old ones. To let go and wait for the warmth to return, in months ahead, with the deep knowledge that it will, as always. The circle in all. So for now, we still.
The darkness is the beginning and the end. For now, listen and slow and gather the last. The space and silence to review, to bury seeds deep in loam, to breathe out and let go and trust in the future of those small shoots. Be as the trees, letting leaves fall to nourish new growth in spring.
I make tincture from berries gathered in autumn, to see through the darker months. I leave jars of water out in moonlight, and dance in the falling Birch seeds that carpet the ground like snowfall, revelling in the quiet pitter patter as they drop from drooping branches, as my friend Birch settles into winter, too, silver bark echoing the moonlight illuminating the valley. I slow and sleep and settle. It has not always been easy, fighting the unrelenting consumer season, the workload, the part of me that wants to exist solely in the highs of summer. But there are answers in the dark, and to hear them, I must follow those old footprints across frozen moorland, deep into earthy forests where secrets are whispered on the freezing winds.
As the last leaves fall from the trees we live alongside, I know a few things I need to lay down alongside them. To let myself breathe. To loosen the grip on relentless pursuit, and listen instead. To watch, and ask, and hear the answers. To let things just be, to follow curiosity, to accept. And so, I lay these things in the falling leaves, to rot, to transform, to bring nourishment in future times.
So for now, the blog silences as I work on finishing my PhD. To hide and hibernate as a seed in the loam, to return when my brain has capacity. I bury this space, this potential, and wait. Soon, it will grow again. A leaf, to earth, to roots, to those small buds of spring. The wheel will turn.
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Giving yourself permission to be
Giving yourself permission to be
I start most sentences with ‘now I’m 40…’ recently. It seems as though I’ve somehow shifted into a new phase of life, in this fourth decade. Although, it may just be a serendipitous coming together of a lot of things from the last few years, but the timing seems right, in a way. Has anyone else felt something similar as they get older? Like a settling into yourself, almost? Now I’m 40, I feel that… haha!
I wanted to do a sort of ‘this is what I’ve learned’ thing, but I’m not that great at condensing things and I’m really not good at advice. So instead, here is a collection of thoughts and maybe one or two of them will resonate with someone. Or not! If you’re looking for an actual, helpful list of things, you can find that here, or watch Ethan Hawke’s TED talk on creativity here, which is pretty good. I like to read people’s thoughts and experiences and so I’m just going to ramble out some of that, instead.
Letting go…
In true Sal fashion, I’ve got loads of things I want to write down, but not really any idea how to start. I want to try and describe this shift into being able to choose what to hold on to, and what to let go. Although I think it’s not really a conscious process so much as a “I can’t be arsed with this any more” vibe instead! (Also, can I just interject here that the washing machine has just finished, and the glorious sunshine has immediately disappeared and now it’s raining. Humph). Anyway, I wanted to type out those things that are on their way out, in a sort of great final ‘sodding off’ list. So here they are:
- Caring about being overweight: there’s a whole lot of history here which I won’t bore you with, but I imagine some people may have some similar thoughts. Safe to say, I’ve somehow become so annoyed with the whole thing that I refuse to care any more. Instead of trying to lose weight, I’m thinking about health, longevity, mental health, and sorting my duff knee out. Realising that bodies exist and change over time, and I currently exist in this one, at this time.
- Thinking the only riches are monetary: I remember in my twenties absolutely wishing for just one day off a week, where I didn’t have to think about work. That wish seemed to work rather well although I seemingly forgot to ask the universe not to f* me over in the process – now I have a lot of time, but also a chronic illness and an inability to actually sustain a full time job. Hooray. Safe to say, if time was money, I’d be the next Elon (but less of the actual, y’know, Elon-ness). But if money was money (hear me out), currently I have not much at all, personally. What I’m trying to say is that there are loads of other things that are also good. (I hate that 9-5 ‘work’ is normal and love a good wallow around in the possibility of a rose-tinted utopia. But this is not the time or place! Also, big awareness that money is a thing we need in our current society, and all of the issues that come along with that, and the lack thereof).
- Not doing things for myself: this is a work-in-progress, an ongoing theme in therapy, and something I regret looking back years and years. But, better late than never – I’m getting there and this is something I want to talk more about on the blog, the whole process of rediscovery – or discovery, as I’m not sure I ever knew myself properly. It’s like I’m an onion and each layer peeled back is a surprise – “Oh! I can actually do that? I’m allowed?”. Safe to say, I’ve got my first tattoo booked in, I’m learning that I can ‘be creative’, and the brighter clothes (and huger earrings) the better. I’m taking the first tentative steps, but looking forward to peeling more of those layers (without the obligatory onion crying of course). I just figure it’s so much effort to fit in and I’m just so tired, so see ya later to all of that.
- Pretending I haven’t got a chronic illness or neurodiversity: I am over it. Yes, I get tired. I can’t organise myself out of a paper bag. Some days I need to just become one with a blanket. I can’t remember what I did last week, or this morning, or an hour ago, or annoyingly literally five minutes ago. But I can remember every single word to PJ and Duncan’s debut album (is that a brag? I’m thinking yes). I know that there is a paperclip in an old business card holder in the second drawer down on the third shelf in the office. My mind thinks in universes, but doesn’t know how to start a single thing. Things that are boring are impossible. I have to stop myself doing stuff when I feel fine, because if I don’t then there will be at least a 3 day waiting period before I can do anything else. Some days I’m buzzing, some days I’m buzzed out. I don’t feel bad about it any more. It kind of links into the previous point, I think. It just is, and I just am, and that is all.
It’s weird that even typing that all out is a mixture of anxiety and worry about it being ‘out there’, and a relief at the same. It’s taken 40 years to kind of realise that “I can’t be arsed with it” is actually a legitimate life rule and one that I am finding copious joy in applying. I’d love to hear what you can no longer be arsed with, also.
But, although I am loving the gradual process of letting stuff go, there are actually things I want to lean into, as well.
…and holding on
It’s taken a loooong time and a lot of therapy to get to the point where I am actually starting to put myself together as a person. Lots of reasons and I’m sure no one wants to hear all of that stuff, but the upshot is that I can play and wear things and believe and be good at things and take up space and be a woman and celebrate that and all the bits that come along with being a sentient being on this little planet. So, let’s find things to hold on to. Here are mine:
- Doing things for physical health and mental health: I used to be very healthy, and have become less so, for a multitude of reasons. Everything is relative – there is no one size fits all. So letting go of comparison (a biggie, still a work in progress) and choosing things for health is something I am doing! I can’t stick to a routine, so embracing the rise and fall of interest, tentatively making friends with this body, (although body positivity is beyond me – I’m more of a neutral kinda person right now, and that’s a good place for me) and doing things to keep it going for a few more years at least. No diets, no exercise plans, no rules. Just choices in the moment, and moving a little more, as I can, when I can. Owning those days when I need to do less, or do something wild, or just hide from the world, or be in the world. It’s all good.
- Advocating for myself: This is frustrating, and I’ve got a lot of self-internalised bias, and slowly those walls are coming down which is a good thing. Asking for help, exercising my rights, making sure I don’t just go ‘ahh it’s ok I don’t want to be any trouble’ (as much as I want to). Not apologising for how I am, not trying to make myself small, or agreeable. Doing things I want to, taking opportunities. Owning those parts of me that usually I want to change to fit in. Being confident in my choices. Bring it on!
- Embracing play: I played a lot as a kid, and that was excellent. Somehow that disappeared totally and I missed it. This new of re/discovery is a good time to re/discover playing for playing’s sake. Doodling. Drawing. Wandering. Playing music, making music, creating, singing, making NOISE! Bouncing around to a song in my head. Getting excited about things and places and ideas. Ideas! Following a train of thought and becoming so enthusiastic (and not bothering that I’ll never figure out how to start). Short-term, intense interest. Re-discovering old interests! Finding things out. CURIOSITY! More of this, much more.
- Generally existing: I’ve spent my life flitting between personalities according to who I’m talking to (that rejection sensitive dysphoria got me good). Putting a name to that, and finding a reason (turns out I’m not just a crap person) has been wildly illuminating and the resulting freedom is rather enjoyable. It still happens, but I know it happens, and I can now try and figure out who, what, and why I am, at this moment in time. We all change, in time, in location, even day to day. But overarchingly, there are some constants. Existing and being able to say “yes, I believe this”, “yes I think that”, “yes I am this” and not just blindly agree with whatever the other person says to avoid any sort of criticism… it’s crazy to me! What a feeling! To exist, as a whole, as your self?! Wow. It’s blowing my mind. There’s always that tinge of sadness that it’s taken me this long to get here, but that’s ok. Everything needed to take this long.
So, I’m not sure that made any sense at all, but I feel better for writing it all down, so I suppose that’s a net positive. Everything is still very much a new thing, and there are forwards steps and backwards steps, and not really an end goal, just the turning of a corner and a new kind of light hitting my eyes. I’m curious if anyone else has felt similar. Letting go of things, moving forward with others, feeling more settled, enjoying the journey of growing older but not necessarily wiser!
I’m all typed out now. Time for a cuppa!
(I have just remembered that I was going to hang the washing out, back up at the top of the post! The rain has retreated over the side of the valley. I’m going to chance it. This could be a mistake).
(I wish I could write this many words for my university course).
Sal x
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A birthday and a re-beginning: looking back at 40
Looking back at 40
A few weeks ago, I was 40. I didn’t think that I would be one for much of a retrospective, but I’ve found myself thinking a lot about my life so far, and in particular the last decade. I know people always say that your thirties is the decade where you begin to discover yourself somehow, and in a way that’s true, but working through depression, burnout and subsequent therapy didn’t really feel like I was discovering anything at the time.
I remember my 30th birthday. Taking a holiday from the cubicle where I worked and heading off to Spain to visit my dad and keeping my birthday quite low-key. I was 6 months into that cubicle job, depressed and not really knowing why. Looking back I was trying to deal with the burnout that had ended my previous retail management career, but of course in the midst of it, it was impossible to see. I just knew that I was miserable, and every day I dreaded heading to the train station to stand on the packed train full of commuters, to spend all day in an airless office, only to repeat it the next day, and the next. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of a rough 10 years of discovery. Here I am, at the end of those 10 years, definitely older, possibly a little wiser, but very much more at peace with myself. On my 40th birthday, I woke up in a tent in John O’Groats, a very different person to ten years ago. It’s been a ride, but a much-needed one.
This looking back seems to have brought with it some clarity regarding this blog. Up to now, there have been some tentative beginnings, a lot of big thinking, but as I know now, the actual action is something I find a little more difficult. I didn’t really know what I wanted the blog to encompass, or what I wanted to say. I spoke with my therapist about how I’ve started to feel more solid in myself, a little more whole, but also like I’m at a point in my life where I’m really just beginning. I think I want to explore this, to explore who I am. Who I am now, I mean. I want to be able to look back and learn from the experiences I’ve had, the things that made me. All of it, the good and bad, the enjoyable and heart-wrenching. I want to take what I’ve learnt, those bits of me, and carry them with me as I explore this new decade. It’s a rediscovery of sorts, a journey back to self, an unpeeling.
So that’s what I’ll write about. Rediscovery. Doing things and going places, learnings from life, the joy that nature brings me, aligning myself with the seasons. I’ve spent a lot of time not doing things, for various reasons, over my whole life, really. I spent a lot of time becoming somebody who I wasn’t, but I never really knew who I actually was, who I actually am. I think the process of discovery (or re-discovery) will be a lot of fun, and I am rather looking forward to it!
It’s weird, I spent a lot of time looking at Instagram accounts and blogs and regretting closing down my old blog a little. I wondered what other people were writing about, and what people wanted to see. I was full of envy for those blogs and accounts full of beautiful pictures and perfect moments. I started and stopped a hundred times, and I’ll probably start and stop a hundred times more. This feels authentic, though. What can you do, but write about what you know? This blog has to be me, and this time I hope I can strip away all of those things I think I should write about, and just write about the things I want to. Hopefully they are interesting for others, too.
So, this is me. Some words on a page, some thoughts in my mind. Time, tea and tales. All the learnings and unlearnings, the ups and downs, the ebb and flow. A new knowing, solid base, and a step forward. Here we begin.