Where am I now?
Right this minute, as I start to write this post, I'm in bed. It's half past seven on a winter morning and I've been awake since just after five. I haven't looked outside to see what the weather's doing. Instead, I made a cup of tea, grabbed an apple and brought my journal back to bed.
I realise that this is one of the pleasures of living alone. I don't have to be considerate first thing in the morning. I can sleep late or I can get up early. I can sprawl here with books spread out on the bed, contemplating the idea of maybe going back to sleep when I've written this
My natural starting point for this piece would be what I wrote when I first asked the question, but that was six months ago. A lot can change in six months. A lot has changed in six months. I moved house for one thing. I've gained a couple of clients and relinquished one that wasn't working out for me. I've stopped learning Spanish and taken up Japanese. I've started swimming regularly and found my T'ai Chi teacher.
A friend recently said something about the person I've become, which makes me wonder if I've become someone different. Or whether I'm just in a different place and context is everything.
Six months ago, back on the island, I was aware that I had been living on auto-pilot for the previous year-and-a-half, simply reacting to situations, doing what needed to be done, course-correcting on instinct. There was so much that needed to be done, that needed other people to do it, that I wanted done before I could step back into my life. I was still working to other people’s agenda as much as to my own. I don’t regret that. It was necessary. It was inevitable.
But it was temporary. When I tried to think about how I was last time I was there (on the island), I found it hard to remember. I think I read quite a bit. I got up, had breakfast and walked… but not so very far. I remembered sitting on the headland and sunbathing on the beach. I remembered wondering about whether or not someone had meant what I thought they meant, whether they were wanting to step into my life, whether I wanted them to do so. I remembered trying to work out: what next, how? But I couldn’t remember how I actually felt. I could not recapture a single day of that fortnight. I had only snippets. That told me I had not been totally present. Given what I knew I was going back to, that was no surprise. The cats had been rehomed, the trees had been felled, but the house and the garage and the workshop were overwhelming. I had barely started the groundwork.
I wrote "Whether I will remember this trip more clearly in a year’s time remains to be seen. But the groundwork is now complete. I am going back to a new beginning. I am going back to start packing up the house."
Six months on, I do remember. I remember deliberately not doing very much more than the previous time, but more easily. I remember my first days at Del Mar and already knowing that I wouldn't do little and I would do it very slowly and that I would be back. I remember how familiar it all felt, walking the coast path and the country lanes, and how even the ones I was discovering for the first time felt like I knew them.
I felt like I had time.
I was halfway through a year’s coaching programme and beginning to believe that by the end of it I would know who I am and where I’m headed. Having completed the year, the fog has now cleared and my course is set – but I'm keeping my coach/mentor on board. I'm not naïve enough to think I can do this on my own. I'll take all the help that's going.
Financially, I am as secure as one can be in this uncertain world. Of course if the banks collapse or the pension fund tanks, then I’m ever so slightly stuffed…but let’s assume that the very worst does not happen, that the even keel can be maintained. The major expenditure has been completed under budget. There is income in the pipeline. I know how far I can stretch the funds. There are lots of ifs and buts and maybes – but if I worry about them, then I’ll waste whatever time I do have and money’s no good to a dead woman.
And of course, contrary to popular belief I have not "retired". I am just enjoying the fact that I don't have to work myself into the ground.
Emotionally, I have regained my strength. I know I can survive the worst that life can throw at me. I know that I hurt easily, that I will always be vulnerable in that sense – but equally I know that I am resilient, that I heal, that I am capable of getting over myself, and getting over other people. More: I know that I do not want to change this. Being vulnerable to love – who wouldn’t want to be that? Who would want to protect themselves from loving and being loved?
In the mean meantime, I know that I can be happy enough, reasonably content, without a special someone in my life. As much as I miss (will always miss) Clive, I never donned the widow’s weeds, my heart always stayed open, and I kept getting up and getting on with life regardless. I take my pleasures where I find them, look for beauty, seek joy…and if the fates decree that I must do so alone for a time, so be it. I have no need to challenge them.
What about friendships? They say a ‘friend in need, is a friend indeed’ and I’ve certainly learned that in adversity you really do find out who your friends are. Those I expected to be there for me, but were not, I now let go. I have no need to cut them out of my life, but I understand that they do not meet my ‘standard’ for ‘friend’. Is that cold? Perhaps, but I think we all have a standard to be met, when we think of what we mean by the term ‘friend’. Most people probably give it no thought, but even so they will have an idea of what is acceptable and what is not. It will be different from person to person. Some are needier than others. Some are more forgiving. Some use the term loosely. Some attach significance.
I have also learned that in adversity, true friends really will drop everything to hold space for you, to give you what you need, to be there. I am still touched to the point of tears remembering how some people responded.
Finally, I have also learned that adversity can bring new people into your life, who will become true friends. How long such people remain remains to be seen…but without what happened they would not be the part of my life that they are, and I am glad to have them here. Syen.
I haven’t travelled very far in the last four years, and that’s too long. There were good reasons: two years for the degree, one year in the aftermath of Clive, and another creating my new home. But enough! Travel is back on the priority list. Home is a place to come back to, not a place to hole-up in.
And then, finally, there is whole thing about the written word. I have to keep reminding myself that I am a published author, a published poet, a business writer, a story-teller of a kind. This is where I'm heading. I am at the beginning of this journey. Only a couple of years ago I was saying that I was not creative, I now know different. I not only know that I am creative, I love being so. I write for the pleasure of playing with words. Like Anaïs Nin (how dare I make the connection?!) I write to find out what I think. I write because I can. Now is the time to stop faffing about and get serious about it.
So there we go. That’s the starting point.
I am in a different place. It is a calm place. There is no pressure of work and no obnoxious neighbours. There is space. And time. And belief.
I am on the threshold of a scarcely imagined future – and the door is open.
