Category: pursuit of happiness

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Running With Wolves

The deeper I get into the book I’ve been reading, ‘Women Who Run With the Wolves’, and the more I relate it to my life, the more I can see how broken and bent my life has been. I know how melodramatic this sounds, I can hear the voices telling me all that stuff: how lucky I am to have had such a (materially) comfortable life; that I should stop whining and practise gratitude; that I should stop reading books that make me unhappy; that I should stop thinking so much and simply be.

I was never cut out to be a nice, good, well behaved girl, but I tried, I really did. Some of my struggles in that regard were clearly related to my dyspraxia, interpreted as clumsiness, untidiness, laziness, carelessness, not listening, not paying attention, all those traits of the ‘difficult’ child. I wasn’t deliberately ‘naughty’, in fact I tried very hard to avoid it, which still holds to this day – needing to know the ‘rules’ so I can stay on the right side of them always, never causing trouble, never making waves – except that doesn’t always work, isn’t always possible, there were/are/will always be times when through carelessness etc I overstep the mark, or get trapped in a situation where to please someone upsets someone else and so I keep falling over my own feet (metaphorically as well as literally) and bringing down judgement on myself, which is why, as you must know by now, it’s easier for everyone if I just keep away from other people as much as I can.

The book, written about thirty years ago, is a Jungian analysis, illustrated by myths and fairy tales from all cultures, about how girls and women are socialised into conforming to culturally required feminine norms and roles. The author’s main thesis is that by trying to live up to those norms and roles, many women suppress their creative spirit, or ‘wild nature’. I gave up on it the first time I tried to read it, two years ago, because her writing style irritated me and it seemed related to New Age ‘Goddess’ cults, which feel a bit whacky to me. Now I’ve persevered I’m more impressed by the psychology behind it, and anyway, it was recommended by my therapist, and I have great respect for her academic credentials.

And, as you can probably guess from that description, the idea of the ‘wild nature’, the alternative female archetype and alter ego of the creative spirit, whose suppression can cause great harm and distress in women’s lives, struck a mighty chord for me. Hence the posts over the last few days about the Wild Thing who lives caged inside of me: self-destructive, resentful and raging as any caged beast has the right to be, but only ‘evil’ if seen from a specific, limited perspective.

I sat down to write almost in tears because I didn’t think I could find the words to express this. But it happened anyway.

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In My Head

Daylight when I was doing my exercises this morning. A temporary respite – the dark will soon catch up again.

The level of chaos in my house and in my life has been creeping up again. Every room is infected by it. But I am busy, I have things to do, so I have excuses not to do anything about it.

Because no one comes into my house from outside – and I’m not expecting anybody for the foreseeable future – there is nobody to judge me – and I am working very hard on not judging myself.

A couple of days ago I didn’t have a photo to post on Facebook, so I took one of the chaos on the living room floor, and the cat behind it with a look that said: ‘how do I get round this?’ Then I made it my cover photo, thinking: ‘this will let people see who I really am. They’re my friends, they’ll accept me, they won’t judge’. Then a comment from one friend showed that she assumed it was the cat who had made the mess. How can you respond to that?

I am trying to untangle the threads of my identity, in the hope that I can learn to live at peace with myself. I am trying to embrace the Wild Thing, not fear and judge her and lock her away. Yes, I am chronically untidy and disorganised, and I understand now that there is a reason for that, although that doesn’t necessarily make the consequences of that chaos any easier to live with. I also know that I should make more effort to deal with it, but at the same time I know I ‘shouldn’t’ keep ‘should’-ing myself all the time. I hear the voice that says: ‘how can you learn to improve if you’re not constantly judging yourself?’ and the one that says: ‘how can you learn to love yourself if you’re always listening to your inner critic?’ and the one that says: ‘stuff this for a game of soldiers, do what makes you happy’ along with all the rest, they go round and round each other, and the little one in the corner just sits and cries and wishes she was anywhere else but in my head.

I ask: ‘This is who I am, do you think that’s okay? Can you let go of who you want me to be and accept this version of who I am?’ I get two kinds of feedback when I try and talk about dyspraxia – one that this isn’t the ‘real me’. It’s just another stick I’ve found to beat myself with; and the other that it’s just an excuse for being untidy, disorganised, lazy etc and I’m not trying hard enough to get myself sorted. The latter is what I’ve lived with all my life, and internalised at an early age: of course I can sort this chaos out if I keep at it and stop whining – the gremlin voice, the inner critic voice.

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Christmas Jumper

It was raining earlier, then the sun came out, now the clouds have returned and the sind wounds (of course I meant ‘wind sounds’, but left that in because a typing spoonerism is pretty weird!) – the WIND SOUNDS a bit rough. Lots to do indoors today – more stuff to do on the website, but at least it’s going okay, and the client is happy.

The knitted jumper’s growing slowly, it seems to be taking ages to get to the point where the sleeves can be separated from the body. I’m working it from the neck down on a circular needle – bit technical there, but what it means is that it should be possible to do the whole thing in one piece without having to sew it together or (my deepest horror), join the sleeves on at the end. I’ve done it that way with crochet a few times (some successful, others not, but with a better record than I’ve had with doing the pieces separately and joining them). I found the method (it’s not exactly a ‘pattern’ because it doesn’t give exact numbers of stitches for size and shape) in a book about knitting all kinds of ‘sweaters’ (it’s American). You start with the neck hole, increase for the shoulders, then keep increasing till it comes down to the bottom of the armholes before starting on the sleeves, and so on. The crucial thing is that you have to keep trying it on – which knitters will understand is a bit tricky when it’s all on a circular needle which is smaller than the circumference of your body. Also it’s complicated by the fact that it’s for my daughter, who like me is broad across the back (and not lacking out front either), but not quite as big as me- there again it’s a Christmas jumper so doesn’t need to be snug, so I’m trying it on myself and aiming to make it so I can get into it, but a little too tight for comfort.

The last three years I’ve made Christmas jumpers for the grandchildren, and made sure to make them with plenty of growing room. (My original plan was that they could then be ‘passed down’ when grown out of, but I can’t see that happening.) So this year it’s my daughter’s turn.

You may well ask why this year I’ve decided to go for this top-down method rather than sticking with the pattern I’ve used before, and I asked myself that question quite a lot when I embarked on this a few weeks ago. But I think if I can master this technique I’m going to find it a lot more interesting and enjoyable – in fact I am finding it just that – and might become inspired to make more jumpers this way and develop my own designs… in fact I’ve already got a few ideas.

Another way of using up all that yarn I keep buying – and it’s raining again. Might as well hunker down.

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Wild Thing

In my therapy session yesterday I read out the post I wrote on Wednesday, about love and relationships and at the end, in answer to the question of why I’m alone, she said:

‘Because you’re not prepared to compromise on who you are.’

Of course! It came like a lightning bolt: I’d rather have my solitude than suppress the difficult part of my nature. I’m not a ‘loveable’ person – I’m really not. Turn the mirror around. Why do even I find it so hard to love myself? Why have I spent a lifetime berating myself for failing to live up to the image of a ‘good’, pretty, well-behaved girl? Why have I always been so careless of the feelings of men who wanted me (my first husband adored me, and I despised him for it) and wept over the ones who didn’t?

Writing out her comment now, I can see how it could be taken for a criticism (though I know that’s not how she meant it). ‘Compromise’, after all, is usually considered to be a Good Thing – and so it is, in most circumstances, but it can also be seen as a betrayal of a deeper integrity –  ‘You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em’.

I’ve been folding for so much of my life, ‘settling for what I could get’. Striving for the rewards due to a ‘good-girldom’ that was never going to be within my grasp, however hard I tried, and hating myself for that failure.

And now I’m alone with the Wild Thing – which has just reminded me of a poem I wrote a while back.

Wild Thing

Bind my wounds.
I will rip the bandage
Roll in the dirt
Claw at the scabs
to uncover my flesh
Gleaming
Festering
Bleeding.

Full moon casts shadows
through my window.
I am a wild beast.
If you try to help me
you will suffer for kindness.
Feel my claws, teeth, scales,
Anger
Pain.

Will you leave me
or will you hold me
Feel me writhe
in your grasp?

Will you judge me?
I will show you what I am.
Ignore me
I will scream till you hear
Till I feel your contempt.
Till I see your sneers.
Then I will know.
I will test you
beyond endurance.

Are you brave enough
to hold me still?
Are you strong enough
to love me?

© Linda Rushby July 2014

No one really wants the wild thing. They might think they do, but they don’t want to live with the claws and the beak. They want to cage it with rules and take away its true nature, but when they’ve done that, they find that what is left is not worth having. There is no gold left, only dross.

Linda Rushby from the blog ‘Melinda Solo’, April 2013

I can’t change the Wild Thing into something she’s not, but there may be other ways of taming her. She needs to be recognised for herself, with compassion, not judgement.

And who will do that for her, if not me?

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Lurve and Marriage

How could anyone in their right mind pretend to ‘like’ autumn? Who wants to be reminded of death, darkness, cold, and the knowledge that for the next half of the year that’s what’s to be expected?

Well, admittedly, death, darkness and cold are inevitable parts of life, and we all have to face up to them and accept that that’s how it is, but do we have to embrace them?

Try to believe that you’re not alone, thrown here by chance into this god-forsaken century on this god-forsaken planet. That there is goodness and beauty and hope in this life, sunshine and stories and singing and, in the foreseeable future, springtime again.

I’ve been reading about ‘love’ this morning, and suddenly all the bitterness and disappointment and despair that I have managed to rationalise away has come back in that old familiar rage of: ‘Why me? What’s so awful about me that I don’t deserve/am not capable of being loved?’

So I cry and shout and stop just short of smacking my head, then I will sit with it, face up to it, observe it for what it is, composed of chewing over old disappointments and rejections, sexual frustration and hopeless fantasies, envy and jealousy, shame and self-blame and simple loneliness. All this will pass just as winter will pass, or night. I will have breakfast and get involved with what needs to be done (back to the website) and remind myself of the many reasons why I prefer living alone.

After all, ‘romantic love’ is a social construct, composed of sex, companionship, physical affection (ie non-sexual touching), shared child-rearing, practical support, emotional support, interest in each other’s interests… I have found all of those in various relationships at one time or another, but never all of them rolled into one. I can see it might be unrealistic, to hope to find them all at once, but what is the minimum to settle for? Is it asking too much to hope for more than one or two at a time? By the end of my marriage, I would say that’s about what was left (companionship and practical support, and both of those were pretty lukewarm). For some couples, it seems there’s a fundamental loyalty that underpins all of those and keeps the relationship going when those other criteria have become irrelevant, something I’ve observed in my parents’ and siblings’ marriages, maybe it’s just inertia and lack of imagination, or maybe it’s True Love, who knows? (I wouldn’t, because I’ve never experienced it, and maybe that’s because I’ve never met ‘The Right One’, or more likely because of a fundamental flaw in my personality).

Well there you go, I’ve written and rationalised my way out of my rage again.

I heard the rain in the night, gently, the sort of rain that patters on the roof and makes you feel glad to be safe indoors. It’s been threatening for a couple of days, and now it’s here. Time to hunker down.

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Thresholds

After I’d finished writing yesterday, I looked up the dictionary definition of ‘liminal’ and found that it refers not just to borders, but specifically to thresholds, which pleases me, because of the ambiguity between the two – what I described yesterday as the ‘hazy, scary…’ nature of boundaries, their combination of both limiting aspects but also potential for discovery, change and new experiences.

It also made me think of a picture by William Blake, the frontispiece for his epic poem ‘Jerusalem’, which shows Los (his name for the embodiment of the poetic imagination) about to step through an archway, carrying a lantern into darkness.

About six this morning, as I was lying in bed and thinking, the word ‘edgy’ popped into my head, and I started to think about its implications – that combination of nervousness and excitement. When applied to people, it can imply a kind of fearfulness, a risk of tipping over into a chaotic and destructive state – most likely self-destructive, but not necessarily just that (does self-destruction ever not have repercussions for others beside the self?) But when ‘edgy’ is applied to actions, ideas, art, it implies courage, and is more likely to be complimentary, or at least ambivalent.

This whole idea of edges, boundaries, borders, liminality, the relationships between risk, fear, courage, change, uncertainty, danger, transformation , creativity, loss, immobility (in no particular order) has been haunting me recently as I try to deal with my ‘stuckness’ and lack of motivation and inspiration, not to mention my fear of not being able to find ways of dealing with the obstacles I keep coming up against.

Speaking of which, I think (only think) I may have got round the large ones with the website project, and that it shouldn’t (‘shouldn’t’) require too much more work. Having said that, I went out yesterday morning to walk on the beach and have breakfast out (instead of putting in the work) and realised how much that improved my mood. And then when I got home my broadband was down, so I abandoned websiting and spent the afternoon trying to sort out the design for the jumper, filling in the design on squared paper and then realising it would be far too big, so having to produce a smaller pattern which I think is going to work, but anyway it will all require a lot of time and effort (knitting doesn’t count as ‘work’) to put into practice.

Tai chi this morning, and I’ve just had a phone call from the GP’s surgery offering me a flu jab appointment at 2:15. I had to cancel the last one because I had a cold, so don’t want to miss it. And afterwards I might go and do some café-sitting and reading, or walking if the weather stays nice (which it looks as though it might).  Those things are important and I need to do more of them. But I’ll have a couple of hours between tai chi and lunch to do some website work.

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Liminal thinking

I was thinking about freedom this morning, in that sleeping/waking borderland – which just made me want to use the word ‘liminal’, one that I’ve learned (or relearned, because I think I might have come across it when I was studying sociology, forty years ago), that lovely, slightly hazy, slightly scary word and concept that speaks of borders between places, between states (in both senses of the word) between meanings, perhaps. Or maybe I’m just talking pretentious boll*x again.

I’m reading a book which has been sitting on my Kindle for two and a half years (I checked, because it was originally recommended by my therapist, and I mentioned it in our session on Thursday, and couldn’t remember how long it was since she’d suggested I read it, and I said ‘a couple of years’, which surprised her, so I checked, and I bought it in April 2018, which makes my guess an underestimate, and puts in perspective how long it’s been sitting there unread, and also how long I’ve been seeing her).

When I bought it I read the opening and decided it wasn’t for me (these days I usually download the free sample before deciding to buy, unless it’s a sure-fire author I’ve read before and know I will enjoy). As I told my therapist, I didn’t exactly fling the Kindle across the room, though I might have done if it was a paperback. But this time I’m finding it more interesting, so I’m persisting. It’s a semi-mystical, Jungian exploration of women’s lives and psychology related to mythologies, but I won’t say the title until I feel I’ve got something I want to share from it.

Anyway, when I was in my ‘liminal’ state this morning, I remembered recently talking about freedom and constraints and how constraints are liberating, which seemed to me (this morning) rather Orwellian, so I needed to sort out what context I’d been speaking about. Then I remembered that it was the way in which having a routine frees your mind from having to make decisions in the moment. Constraints, or ‘boundaries’ (which brings me back to liminal states again), relates in my mind to dyspraxia, because it seems to me that a lot of the impact of dyspraxia is around difficulties with knowing where you are in relation to boundaries, in time and space and maybe other things – social acceptability, perhaps, or expectations – and how to manage those relationships. Okay, so that does sound like pretentious boll*x, but when I think that way I feel a buzz that I’m getting close to something interesting and exciting.

Maybe my life is permanently liminal because I am always negotiating my way between this and that, never quite knowing where the boundaries are until I’ve crossed one, which can be catastrophic, or thrilling, or both, or just trivial.

Where does this get me with thinking about freedom, or boundaries, or creativity, or how I find a better way of living with myself? Let me think some more…

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Detritus

I think: if I start writing, maybe the ideas will come? And in a way they do, but they’re not necessarily ideas I want to write. I think: if I do twenty minutes of movement, light candles and incense, sit quietly, maybe the thoughts will go away? And sometimes they do, but mostly they don’t. I lie in bed and do backwards-counting exercises to try and stem the flow so I can get back to sleep, and sometimes it works, but mostly it doesn’t.

Why am I constantly engaged in battles inside my head? Is this just normal, does everybody have this never-ending struggle to manage their thoughts? I used to think that, and that it was just me doing such a lousy job of it. Now I’m not so sure. Now I think: maybe it’s my curse, maybe it’s just another part of my chaotic weirdness. Maybe it’s the cause of everything.

This morning, in bed and after, I was thinking about fear. What am I so afraid of? Failure and rejection, that’s what I thought. I deal with rejection by avoiding contact with other people, pre-emptive rejection. Failure is trickier (not that avoiding human contact is always easy). The best ways of avoiding failure are never to try to do anything and to give up – I am an expert on both of those.

But what did I say a couple of weeks ago? ‘The greatest pleasure in life comes from doing something you don’t want to do and then knowing that you’ve done it’? True enough. Life is a bugger sometimes.

I remember getting into a conversation on Facebook a while ago about the ‘detritus’ that accumulates in your mind, that you have to wade your way through. I feel like I said something quite clever, but now I can’t remember what it was. There is certainly a lot of detritus in my mind.

I’ve just remembered a conversation with a counsellor over twenty years ago – I know it was in autumn 1999, because I saw that particular counsellor then after my parents had died in late winter and we’d moved house over the summer and I was getting about three hours sleep a night and was referred by my GP for six sessions of counselling, but she was offering bereavement counselling, and as I told her, after six months since their deaths I didn’t feel I’d even started to mourn them. But what I remember telling her was about this big well of shit in my head, which I can never empty and which keeps getting refilled all the time. I think the idea came from the title of ‘The Well of Loneliness’. But what was in my well? Loneliness, certainly, but not just that: shame and guilt and fear, and of course , failure and rejection.  

Within ten years I’d left my husband, in the hope that that would bring me new opportunities – which it has, it has, but why has so much stayed the same?

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Leaf Upon the Water

Poem today. Not sure why. Sometimes it happens like that. Feels like this is the first one in a while

The photo was taken in the water lily house at Kew Gardens in 2015. The flowers and small leaves in front are lotuses, the large leaves behind are from giant water lilies. I was tempted to use a photo of a water lily from my old garden pond, but thought some smart Alec might point out that it wasn’t actually a lotus (that’s the sort of thing I’d do, anyway).

Also ‘The lotus flower grows from shit’ is only one of many interpretations of the mantra ‘Om mane padme hum‘ but it was the one explained to me by my first meditation teacher, and it makes for a great metaphor.

Leaf Upon the Water

The lotus flower grows from shit,
the silt of a thousand fishes, living
and dead, their shimmering scales,
dulled and darkened,
sinking through the cloudy waters
to the home of the scuttling things,
sliding into and becoming
the black, unspeakable ooze
that clings and clods
and welcomes into its bitter embrace
the scattered seed
that cracks and bleeds
in its agony of birth,
sending its silvery roots into the darkness
to trap the rotting death-food and to grow
new life that rises,
green and fecund
to break the surface,
unfurl its leaves
and open its lovely face towards the sun.

I am the leaf upon the water,
held in the magic of the meniscus,
I will not struggle
I will trust the power of the water,
I will lie back and let it hold me
until my season is done.

Om mane padme hum.
The lotus flower grows from shit.

Linda Rushby 30 September 2020

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Plus Ҫa Change

New day, new week. Almost a new month. Sunny but chilly.

Found out over the weekend that my local swimming pool won’t be reopening. When I moved to Southsea it was on my doorstep, and I started going in the mornings, then having a bacon butty and pot of tea afterwards at the local seafront café. When I first moved from the flat into this house, I stopped because it seemed too far to walk and I didn’t want to drive there. Then in spring 2018, after I’d finished my cancer treatment, I started going again, walking (it was only 20minutes away) first thing in the morning, only once or twice a week. The café had changed hands, but everything else stayed the same, and I would come out of the pool and stop for a few moments on the prom watching the sea and filling myself with love for this place. Then my writers’ group started meeting at the library on Monday mornings, so I would walk from the seafront into the town centre, and in the process found another café for breakfast. During that time, first John Lewis and then Debenham’s closed down, and our Sunday meetings moved from Debenham’s café to the library as well as the Monday ones.

I’ve lived in Southsea for well over five years now – in this house for four years next month. To me, it doesn’t feel very long, but in that time, so many of the things that I felt made the place special have gone or changed – of course, this year has accelerated that, but many went before that – in fact, of the things listed in the previous paragraph that have now changed or gone, only the pool and the second breakfast café (the one in the town centre) have closed as a direct result of the lockdown – and both were already in financial difficulty – this has just been the final blow.

Places change – that’s how it is. The sea is still there, and the park, I can walk there whenever I wish. Most of the people I’ve met over five years are probably still here, even if I’ve lost touch with them.

I came here intending to start a new life, and I’ve done that in many ways, and I guess I can do it again, even if so many things and places I treasured/took for granted have now slipped into memory (like riding my bike over the Common in that first summer and having coffee overlooking the harbour, watching the Isle of Wight ferries and other boats coming in and out – and when the weather got colder I started going swimming instead). I’d come out of a period when there was very little stability in my life, and the future had always seemed fluid and unknowable. Well, I guess that’s always true, but the human heart likes to kid itself that it isn’t.

I didn’t know when I sat down that this is what I would write today.