Category: angst

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Stream of Consciousness

I got a bit distracted yesterday – or maybe I didn’t. Maybe you were enthralled by my ramblings about: what was that actor’s name, and should I try knitting jumpers based on William Morris designs, or would they look like shit, and would that matter anyway, as long as I had fun doing it? (I missed out the bit about looking up stroke symptoms on Google).

I can’t really work out whether the fact that my mind works like that is unusual or not, given that I can’t get inside anyone else’s head to find out how they think. Up until a few years ago, I assumed that’s the way everyone thinks, that constantly rolling narrative, the barrage of words running through the head, and when I discovered that some people actually think in pictures  (allegedly most people, though I find that hard to believe) it – well – blew my mind. I mean, maybe partially – I can ‘visualise’ some things, but I have to make a conscious effort to do – but as a main way of thinking? How do you visualise abstract concepts? I had this conversation with a friend a while back, and he said that he sees the words as he thinks them. To me that sounds bizarre.

But I started this train of thought by thinking about whether I can control my thoughts. The theme of those pep talks I used to listen to over a full English was that it is possible to control your thinking and by doing so change your life, but my mind seems to have a mind of its own. The actors’ names and knitting designs kind of thoughts don’t bother me at all – except when they interfere with my ability to do more important stuff (which is quite often). I don’t even particularly mind the might I have a stroke and will the cancer come back thoughts too much – they’re awful at the time, of course, but tend not to come very often or last very long.

The ones that really get to me are the regular, unavoidable ones that come in the early hours, or occasionally in the day time, the: I hate myself and wish I was dead, why has everything I’ve ever tried to do with my life come to nothing, why do I always give up on everything, why can’t I write anything apart from this drivel? Those are the ones I’d really like to be able to control. Daylight and doing things can sometimes blow them away – knitting, crochet, reading etc are usually pretty reliable; walking by the sea can be too, but it requires effort to get myself out of the house (not always easy, even when there isn’t a lockdown). Being with other people can be, but it’s risky, it can also have the opposite effect, so in general being by myself is safer.

Writing these daily essays – I think that helps too. I usually feel better afterwards, anyway, even if I don’t have anything to say.

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What am I Worth?

What am I worth?

This was a question posed to me yesterday by my therapist.

‘Imagine it as a title on your blog’ she said. ‘What would you say? I’m trying to challenge you.’

She’d accused me of being obsessed with monetary value, with trying to apply a monetary value to who I am and the things I do.

‘Very early on in this process’ she said ‘maybe in the second session or so, you were quick to tell me that, although you’re financially comfortable, the money you were living off had come to you from your husband in the divorce settlement, and somehow it’s not due to your own efforts’ (or words to that effect – I’m paraphrasing, because I can’t remember exactly what she said).

Which is true. But what I’d just been talking about was the amount of time that goes into things which I know have no realistic possibility of a monetary return, specifically my knitting and crochet (and of course, so obvious that it wasn’t even brought into the conversation, my writing). I’d mentioned that earlier this week I’d been asked how much I would ‘charge’ to make something as a commission – a question I never know how to answer, because half the time I say too much and put them off, and the other half I aim too low, which can also put people off, or just leave me thinking that I’ve undersold myself and somehow failed in that way. Underlying this, I suppose, is an assumption that I am a professional person who sees the things I make in terms of exchange, and has a system for determining prices, whereas from my point of view, they’re just the (rarely useful, and occasionally embarrassing) results of me finding enjoyable ways to pass the time – in other words, hobbies. Incidentally, the word ‘amateur’ comes from the latin word for ‘love’, meaning someone who does something for the love of it, so that a century ago, ‘amateurs’ in most fields (particularly sport) were afforded more respect than supposedly self-serving ‘professionals’.

I know all this, I know that for creative work the price depends on what someone is prepared to pay, rather than the effort that went into doing it, and I also know the argument put forward by creative people that the workman is worthy of his hire. And I know that I’ve never been able to square this circle, and this is a big reason why I’ve never been able to make a success of business, and it all ties up with social anxiety, lack of self belief, and not being able to ask for anything from other people.

But I can’t see the leap from this to the suggestion that I’m fixated on monetary value. She mentioned the struggle to change the law so that it affords value to the traditionally unpaid work of housework and child-rearing, but to me, any capable adult should be able to pay for their own needs. To be continued…

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More About the Madwoman

When I left my husband and both cats, I didn’t exactly walk out with just the clothes I was wearing – that might have been more dramatic and romantic, but it’s not what happened (not that time at least – but that’s another story).

I found a flat in the nearest town, I had enough money saved up to pay for six months rent in advance, and I moved out in February 2009 (actually collected the keys on 14th February, also another story – or several). I hired a van, took some basic furniture from the house (agreed with Hubby): desk and chair, bed, small sofa, wardrobe, dressing table etc, and with help from my daughter, her boyfriend and his parents (and Hubby), moved in for good on the 22nd.  It was a Sunday. I remember us all sitting round the big kitchen table in the old house drinking tea, then I drove back into town to find the chippy wasn’t open (I found another one that was).

I also bought some things – a coffee table, various kitchen items (mostly from charity shops or Wilkinson’s, which was a handy 5 minute walk from the flat), and a laptop and pay-as-you-go dongle. I gradually transferred various bits and pieces from the house over the next few months, as I went back and forth quite a lot – my main computer was still there, in the attic. In April, when my daughter and her boyfriend hired another van to move into their own flat, they brought some more stuff for me, including the office furniture and computer, which I set-up in my ‘study’, (the larger of the two bedrooms in the flat).

But an awful lot of stuff got left behind. I always intended to ‘sort it all out’ one day. I did purge some things, but mainly it was to be done in the future, when everything was resolved, when the divorce was settled, when the house was sold… After three years I left the flat to go travelling, and the things I’d taken with me – and acquired over the intervening time – got packed up and taken back, stacked in the spare room and attic. Six months later I came back to England, moved in with my daughter and granddaughter for a few weeks till we drove one another to distraction, then found another flat, which was all attic, fluffy carpeted and pointed ceilinged like a prism, with three windows looking out over the Fens and a flashing star in the top window at Christmas. I intended to sort out the Stuff in the house, and made a few attempts, including throwing out my mother’s and grandmother’s knitting needles and paraphernalia (which I hadn’t used for years, but was to start replacing only a couple of years later).

The decree absolute came through that year (2012), and part of the divorce agreement was that the house would go on the market in the August – when I returned from travelling. That didn’t happen… To be continued.

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Blogging about Blogging

I do this every morning, supposedly first thing, but in fact I’ve usually already been awake for two or three hours, lain in bed thinking, listened to the radio, fed the cat, exercised, showered, prepared porridge, loaded the dishwasher…

This morning I answered a comment and made a comment on a friend’s post on our group blog, changed my profile picture, then noticed that the second comment wasn’t appearing, realised I hadn’t saved it anywhere else and didn’t want to have to retype it from scratch; thought maybe it was there but needed to be approved by an admin. Tried logging into the email account for the group blog; couldn’t get the password right; tried hunting for the bit of paper with the password on, which I was sure I’d seen in the last few days; decided to go downstairs and use the laptop because I was sure the email and password were saved on there; they weren’t, but the admin account was the saved login, so I managed to get into the group blog and confirm that the comment had never been saved; came back up here, typed it again (as best I could remember), posted the comment.

I could change the password for the group blog – no, it’s not the blog password I need but the gmail account – I can change the password for that, because I think I’m the only person who ever uses it, but it’s annoying me now and I don’t want to. That bit of paper must be around here somewhere.

I have a thing about not wanting to retype something I’ve already written – which is why I always do blog posts in Word first and save them, so I don’t have to do it again. Even a three sentence comment, I want to be sure I’m doing it the same way as I did the first time (or maybe even better, but I can’t know that if I don’t have a record of the original). It’s a foible of mine.

None of which is what I was intending to write about before I sat down at the computer (well, maybe the first paragraph was). My friend’s comment and his post had got me thinking about how and why I write this blog, because he said ‘Your words often make me wonder if you are searching for direction and whether or not I should be following a dream again.’ Then in his own post (referring to himself or a generic ‘you’, I presume, not me specifically) :

‘But really, the question means: what have you done with your life so far? And what are you going to do with what’s left of it?’

Well, what I write is just what comes into my head at the time, and some of that leads to thoughts of my life so far. As for what’s left of it – which is kind of what I thought I would write about, before I got distracted – I’ll start that tomorrow.

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Leaving the Attic

I found a picture the other day of the attic room the last time I saw it, empty of furniture and with the cat sitting on the shelf in the alcove peeping out – I suspect I was hoovering , and that was why she’d climbed up out of the way. I was to be the last to leave the house – to go out of the front door and close it firmly behind me, with the cat in her basket and all her paraphernalia (food bowl, water bowl, litter tray) and drive her to Ex Hubby’s new house. She’d been shut in the empty attic room while the removal men took everything from the rest of the house and loaded the van. E-H (let’s call him that for short) had been waiting for the call from the solicitors to say the money had been transferred and he could go into the office to drop off the keys and pick up the ones for the new house. Weirdly, in our previous house move I’d also been the one left behind to close up while he and the children went to collect the keys. So I was last to enter and last to leave this place, though I’d first left it over seven years earlier. I had to give him time to get to the office, exchange the keys and then drive to the new place – I may even have been waiting for him to call me to confirm he was in there, I can’t remember, in fact I’d forgotten about that day until I saw the photo.

I used to joke that my mid-life crisis started when I began my PhD at 38, and never finished. But looking back from this perspective, I think it ended sometime in the year following that last day in the attic, after the final upheaval of moving the last of my stuff deposited that day in E-H’s new garage down to this house, somewhere in the trauma of chemo, maybe the dawning of the year after that – a quarter of a century of crises, depositing me at last on the shores of the third age, the Age (supposedly) of Wisdom.

Through my forties, I had the sense that my life-path was not going in the way I would have chosen, but that time was running out to find anything different. I’d pinned my hopes on being able to continue with an academic career, but that ground into the sand of endless, fruitless job applications, a succession of part-time, temporary admin jobs and a failing marriage. My fifties ultimately brought a new sense of hope, of the potential for doing things differently – it would take courage and persistence that I’d previously dismissed as impossible, and a willingness to walk away from a tarnished dream in search of a shiny new one.

I miss that hope now, as I sit here, on my captain’s chair at my leather-topped desk, watching the gulls fly calling past my window.

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Not Thinking of an Elephant

If I start typing, what will come out of my fingers? What have I been thinking about in the two hours since I woke up? I don’t want to remember, and you don’t want to know. I tried to fix the motion-sensitive, darkness sensitive light on my landing by replacing the batteries and it still doesn’t work. Last time this happened, I took it down and left it on my dressing table for a couple of years, then picked it up one day and changed the batteries again, and it miraculously came on, and has been working ever since until yesterday. I don’t know if I can be bothered to leave it on my dressing table again for another couple of years.

I once tried a blog thing (I think it was a group set up by someone else) where you wrote fifty words about something positive and uplifting. I did it a few times, then gave up, and I think everyone else in the group did pretty much the same. If I have to think happy thoughts before I write, I can’t write anything at all. Don’t have that sort of imagination. It’s like the inverse of that thing the pop-psychologists say about ‘…try not to think of an elephant…’ I have heard that so many times that these days, it doesn’t immediately conjure up an image of a pachyderm so much as an infuriatingly chirpy self-help guru whose face needs a good slapping.

Wow, look at that, 250 words, half way already.

The days when I wake up without this dark cloud of gloom over my head are vanishingly rare – I think there might have been one I wrote about a couple of months ago when I’d been reading in bed and actually felt good by the time I started writing? Not sure, it was probably more recently than it feels. I do, admittedly, often feel better by the time I’ve finished writing. I really noticed this in the summer, when most days I could take my breakfast out into the garden and eat in the sunshine. Won’t be doing that today, however.

Bin day today, which means I will get as far as the front gate this evening. I actually can’t remember the last time I left the house (and garden and forecourt) – I think I had a couple of visits to the shops between Christmas and New Year, but don’t think there have been any since. All this is my choice, of course, there isn’t really anything to stop me walking to the sea front except apathy and general can’t-be-arsedness.

Yesterday I had a go at trying on my jumper, and concluded that I had separated the sleeves from the body too soon, as I suspected, so I undid all the work I’d done on it the previous day. I’m happy with that decision.

Just read a tweet which says: ‘Freedom is nothing but only a chance to be better.’ Better in what way? I wonder.

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First Sunday in January

Every morning, I wake up feeling myself to be at the bottom of a dark and muddy pit, and I have to drag myself out of it and face the day. That’s the meaning of the routine I described yesterday, because it gives me a sequence of things to do and ensures that I don’t have to make any choices until late morning (apart from deciding what to write on here, of course).

Last night I must have had quite a vivid dream, because I distinctly remember thinking: ‘this is really good, I know I’m dreaming but I can remember all that’s happened quite clearly and it all makes sense!’ I can remember that much, but not the content of the dream I felt I was living through at the time.

I keep seeing friends’ pictures on Facebook of their morning walks, but don’t feel the urge to go myself, even though this is the easiest time of year to see the sunrise. One set of pictures of the boating lake and beach on Friday morning just brought back a memory of walking by the Thames and going up in the London Eye on New Year’s Day morning in 2010 – the first anniversary of the post I shared a couple of days ago. Circles and spirals. On my own for a year, and looking down on a new world and a new decade (I personally think that, as the calendar is a cultural construct anyway, it makes sense for a decade to be defined by its third digit). Anyway, one year into my new life, I felt that the year ahead was going to be the one when things would really start to take off for me.

People (by which I guess I mean, ‘myself, but I don’t want to admit whatever it is I’m about to say’) always seem to put too much stress on that mark on the calendar (which reminds me, I haven’t even got one, because I still haven’t got round to organising it, probably too late now, and I haven’t taken the old one down from the wall).

I’ve observed it with a minimum of fuss this year, I suppose that’s largely down to being home alone. In the past I’ve been criticised for having expectations ‘…through the roof…’, though these days I have very few expectations of myself, or of the world. All those years of trying to change the external conditions of my life, then trying to change myself into a ‘better’ (in some nebulous way: More organised? More productive? Less selfish? More altruistic?) person, and finally trying to change how I felt about myself: (More accepting? More fulfilled? Happier? More at peace?) have not freed me from the early morning dark and muddy pit that I scrabble out of every day.

In my yoga session this morning, this question popped up: ‘Do you love me?’ and back came the reply: ‘of course I love you, now, bugger off and leave me alone’.

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Ghosts of New Years Past

The last post from ‘Husband or Cat’, posted twelve years ago today. I created a new blog immediately afterwards, under the name Melinda Solo.

I’ll be honest, I’m sharing it as an excuse not to write anything new today. Which, now I’m here, doesn’t seem like such a good idea. Some days it just feels like that.

New Year’s Day is quite a potent day for blogging. I feel as though I’ve left a mark on this day several times. The one for 2009 was obviously highly significant, and I’ve referred back to it a few times since.

The Spare Room

The Buddhist New Year party. An evening of reflection, meditation, poetry reading, sharing, wine, food, laughter, friendship. When Chris tentatively mentioned the idea a month ago, I leapt at it.

‘I’ll come, even if it’s only you me and Clare’ I said. ‘I won’t be doing anything else that night.’

It was a good evening, a positive evening, an unconventional evening. What more could you ask for? Better sober with good friends than drinking here alone… I wasn’t clear whether the invitation extended to sleeping over or not, so I took an overnight bag in case, but at around 1:30 the party broke up…

I got back around 2, the house in darkness. Hubby hadn’t left the light on for me, but at least he hadn’t bolted the door. I took my overnight bag into the second bathroom and unpacked my night things. And then I thought…

I went into the bedroom in the dark, got my dressing gown and hot water bottle. I could hear his breathing, soft and regular. This is it, the voice told me, now is the time. It makes perfect sense. Why bother climbing in beside him, one more night? There’s nothing there for either of you, is there?

So I took my things into the spare room. Laid the bag on the floor. Switched the radiator on – the heating was off, but it would be ready for morning. Looked around me.

Checked the wardrobe: full of rubbish, I can sort that out, give myself some storage space in here. I need a bedside cabinet, but for now the clock can sit on the floor.

This is my room now. Why put it off any longer?

Lying in the bed, stretching out, luxuriating. The feather duvet, I will have to swap them over, this is bad for my asthma, but I can survive one night. And I’ll bring my own pillow from the other room tomorrow. But for now, it will be OK.

I woke just after 6, the cat had found her way in and was walking over me and purring. Outside the window, I could hear the fountain in the fish pond. A transit place. I won’t be here forever. But it will do for now.

It was gone 7 before I got up, even though I knew there would be no more sleep. So I did the usual things, fed the cats, put the coffee on. I went back upstairs to meditate, but the mp3 player wouldn’t switch on. Must have left it on all night, I’ll have to recharge it. Then I heard him in the kitchen.

‘I slept in the spare room. Thought that was easier than disturbing you.’

‘OK. I didn’t know what was happening so I didn’t leave the light on.’

‘That’s fine, no problem.’

So polite. We are always so civil with one another. Never any animosity.

The coffee machine gave its sudden final burst of noise and steam. I lifted the lid. Still some filtering through.

He was sitting at the table eating Shredded Wheat.

‘Do you want your coffee pouring now?’

‘Yes please.’

I looked at the chair opposite him. Should I pull it out, sit down?

‘I need to talk to you today’.

‘OK.’ No curiosity, no reaction.

‘Do you want to do it now, or later?’

‘Later.’

OK then. Later it is.

by husbandorcat @ 2009-01-01 – 08:09:45

In the first post of the new blog, I described the actual conversation which I sprung on my husband. It was pointless asking him if he wanted to talk ‘now or later’, I knew that, just procrastination on both our parts. I’d been procrastinating long enough – I suppose we both had, but I couldn’t help but take all the blame onto myself. Also, of course, for me it was exciting, because I was about to embark on a new adventure – running away again. Whatever happened next in my life, I was sure, something good would come out of it.

The spooky thing is that I feel now as though I’m not completely alone, as though there’s someone else in this house who’s still asleep but will get up soon and need to be interacted with. And of course, the same old cat just came and rubbed against my legs.

Ghosts of New Years past. But it’s just an arbitrary mark on the calendar, and I haven’t even got one this year – the last few years I’ve had a Vistaprint one made of my own photos, but didn’t get round to it this time. I’ve honed that old procrastination thing to a fine art, over the years.

Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright

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Husband or Cat?

We moved into the house with the attic in 1999 – our last home as a family, though I wasn’t exactly the first one to leave it – that honour goes to our son, who left in 2004 to go to university, though he was back in the holidays for a few years, and also for the ‘industry’ section of his third year, in 2007.

I announced that the smaller attic room would be the birthplace of ‘…the first great novel of the twenty-first century!’ With a legacy from my parents (who had both passed away early in 1999) I bought a new computer (the first time I’d had one that was all my own, instead of sharing a family one), a leather-topped desk and captain’s chair (which I still have) and a suite of flatpack office furniture (which I assembled by myself, but which has suffered after multiple house moves since and has mostly gone). I filled the shelves with books and filled my time with housework, job applications and managing the activities and transport needs of two youngsters who were rapidly morphing into teenagers. I was living in a Grade 2 listed Georgian house and garden, beautiful beyond any realistic expectation I might have had, and I told myself every day how lucky I was.

Six years later, in the middle of an autumn night, I went up into my attic room, switched on my computer, Googled ‘free blogs’, found a site called ‘blog.co.uk’, created my first blog (which I titled: ‘Husband or Cat?’) and wrote the following:

Here’s my scenario…

I have had a cat for nine years. Before we got the cat, my husband always swore he didn’t want one, but since we have had it he has always got on very well with it and has never shown any animosity towards it.
I recently decided to get another kitten. My husband’s reaction went something like this:
Hubby: If we get another cat, we have to get rid of the old one.
Me: We’re not getting rid of the old one.
Hubby: In that case, I’ll go.
Me: OK, you go then.
In spite of this conversation, I went ahead and got the kitten on the assumption that my husband was not serious, and that he would learn to love the new cat just as he had with the old one.
However, he refuses to be in the same room as the kitten, to the extent that he will not eat a meal with myself and our daughter if the kitten is present. When he is not at work, he has taken to spending all his time in a room in the attic.
When I asked him how long he intended to keep this up, he announced that he did not wish to be in the same house as the kitten and would find somewhere and move out.
I offered to get rid of the kitten, but he replied that it was too late and he was going anyway.
This after 23 years of marriage, 28 years together, and never any hint in the past that he was dissatisfied with our relationship in any way.
No one would make this up. This is my life.
What happens next?

husbandorcat, blog.co.uk, 16 October 2005
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Madwoman Out of the Attic

Writing is easy – just listen to the words in your head and transcribe them. That’s the way I do it, anyway. Never a time when there aren’t any words in my head, though admittedly most of them aren’t worth preserving. Which begs the question… but I’m not going down that road again, because I’ve asked it too many times and never found an answer. It’s just a habit – something I do every morning (or almost every morning) like tai chi, or feeding the cat, or listening to ‘Thought for the Day’, or defecating. (actually, the only one of those I absolutely can’t avoid doing is feeding the cat, as long as I’m here, though if I’m not here, someone else comes in to do it.)

Now my mind is wandering and I’m not actually typing. Oh, I fixed the mouse, by the way, it was just a new battery that it needed. I remembered them and even got as far as bringing them up (I wasn’t sure if it needed AA or AAA so brought both), when I remembered that I needed to bring up the loo cleaner – which I also brought up. Wonder how long it will take me to remember to take the spare batteries downstairs again? Or to clean the loo? (Only kidding, I put the loo cleaner in as soon as I got upstairs).

I told you most of the words in my head aren’t worth preserving. They’re either stuff like that, or things I’ve already said before.

Why do I tag myself as the ‘Madwoman in the Attic’? Especially as the house where I live now doesn’t even have an attic? It’s partly, of course, a literary  reference to Jane Eyre, in which Mr Rochester keeps his first wife locked up in the attic (which probably was a kinder option than sending her to one of the notorious ‘madhouses ‘ of the time). Ironically, I’ve just realised that in the ‘Husband or Cat?’ incident of 2005, it was my ex-husband who voluntarily moved himself into the attic –I’ve never noticed the irony before, but that’s a story for another time. Anyway, our attic had two rooms, and he confined himself to the larger one, which wasn’t my study, and had a telly and VHS in addition to a computer.

The whole attic thing went back much further than that, however, to a time when I thought it was romantic for writers to starve in attics (or ‘garrets’ – I’m not sure what the difference is between the two). I’d long dreamt of having an attic to write (though not necessarily starve) in. As soon as we saw that house, I knew it was going to be my room – the ‘Room of One’s Own’ as recommended by Virginia Woolf for any woman who wanted to write (literary references coming thick and fast today).

When I left, it also became the repository for all the junk I left behind… but this is the start of a much longer story…