Category: self awareness

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Reading (Part 2)

On any normal Monday… I’d be getting out of the pool around now. Except that it wouldn’t be a normal Monday, it’s Bank Holiday – not that that makes much difference to me. Five years ago (261 weeks) it was Bank Holiday, and I had breakfast at Rocksby’s, sitting outside on the prom, watching the sea and the boats and the Isle of Wight across the water and marvelling that I was here and how exciting it all was, never mind all those boxes I had to unpack. Rocksby’s is gone now, or rather, the basic structure and a couple of the staff are still there, but even when it’s open, it’s not the same, and the bacon sandwiches are terrible. Everything changes.

I rang my brother yesterday, it’s a thing we’ve done on and off over the years since I’ve been on my own, ringing each other on the first Sunday morning of the month. It’s been a bit erratic over the last couple of years while I’ve been going to writers’ group on Sundays, but as he said last month, now he knows where to find me on Sundays (or any other day). I told him that I’m enjoying not having to go out and interact with people, and he said something like: ‘that must be a blessing’ which was such an unusual word for him to use that I had to ask him to repeat it. But it’s a good word, appropriate, because yes, I have been feeling blessed, living in my cosy, stress-free bubble.

I told him I’d thought of him because on Saturday I heard a play on the radio about the life of Arthur Ransome, who wrote the Swallows and Amazons books, which I know he loved, and his daughters loved, and my sister loved too, though to be honest I was never all that interested in them (though I didn’t say that to him). It was one of those things that my two elder siblings did that I felt I should do as well (like staying married to the same people for fifty years), but didn’t really appeal to my nature.

That got me thinking about the kind of books I did read in childhood, and at first I could only think of Narnia and The Wind in the Willows. Partly, I realised, that was because they predominantly came from the library, we didn’t have many books of our own and the ones we did were mainly Ladybird and Observer books, things like that, vaguely educational. It’s not that Mum and Dad didn’t read books, they did (though, as I realise now, it’s not always so easy for adults to find the time), but they also got them from the library – books weren’t a high priority for spending limited cash, when there was an abundant supply which could be borrowed, and were reserved for birthday and Christmas presents.

My preference in books was always magical, which I may come back to another time.

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The Hermit

In our Skype session on Thursday, my therapist commented that I seem much more relaxed and comfortable than when we used to meet in her office. Then, apparently, I was always fretting about my phone, or my keys, or something, always apologising for being two minutes late. Maybe so, but it’s not just that. Our first couple of Skype sessions were pretty stressful too.

This life suits me. Sometimes I just slip into quietness – in a good way, a happy, here-and-now way, a ‘mindful’ way, I guess. Well, it could be just tiredness, but even then it’s a healthy, dozy, peaceful sleepiness, not a mind-buzzing agitated fatigue.

I told her about the worst thing that happened in the week – the encounter with the checkout lady in the Co-op – and realised then that she was the only actual real world person I had encountered since our session the week before. I explained that it’s being with other people that bothers me, though I felt ashamed to admit it.

‘Why do you think that’s shameful?’ she asked.

I blustered a bit.

‘Well, it’s not good to be… misanthropic, is it?’ (though I realised as I said it that’s not a good word, I don’t exactly hate other people in general, I’m just not comfortable about interacting with them) ‘…it’s not right… it’s… inhuman!’

‘Why do you think it’s inhuman?’

Because good people like other people and like being with people. Don’t they? Isn’t that what makes us human?

Well… sometimes I like being with people. What about all those happy pictures I post of myself with friends and family? Ahh, but you can never judge anyone’s mood, personality or attractiveness by looking at the pics they post on social media. Not mine, anyway. Obviously, I only share the ones where I’m looking vaguely human, which gives a completely distorted image of what I see when I look in the mirror.

Now I’ve allowed myself to be distracted from what I was going to say, which is – for example, take the May Day gathering I mentioned yesterday, I enjoyed that – but I can guarantee that I was apprehensive beforehand. Being with other people is always stressful for me, however well I know them, it’s an ordeal because I’m on eggshells in case I do or say something stupid, like taking the wheeled basket-holder in the supermarket, when I should have asked for a normal basket. But I used to work at a regular job, how did I manage then? Because most of the time I got away with it. – but I still felt that sense of dread every day.

I think I’ve tapped into something very deep here, something that goes way beyond introverted vs extroverted. It’s hard to admit, because it does sound quite bizarre, but it explains a lot.

And as my therapist pointed out, in spite of all that, I’m prepared to share this here, with anyone who bothers to read it – perhaps because I don’t really believe anyone will.

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May Day

Today’s memory is from a year and a day after the previous one (a lot can happen in that time – in fairy tales, at any rate).

On the beach at sunrise with a smallish group of friends and friends-of-friends, one of them a Pagan celebrant who led us in a ceremony of welcome to the sun on May Day morning. I remember chanting, facing in the four directions (towards the sea, the land, the sun and… towards the pier? -it’s all I can think of in that direction!) There was also singing, djembe banging, some mandolin playing, probably dancing and definitely consumption of brandy supplied by her partner (not something I normally do at six in the morning, not even on May Day!) And breakfast in the Beach Café.

Thinking back, I realise I hardly ever see that group of people any more. When the world passed around the sun again, I had entered the year of my own personal self-isolation, of chemo and surgery and radiotherapy, and when I emerged from that into 2018, it seemed as though everyone’s life had changed, not just mine, the dance had shifted, we had all taken up new positions and our paths no longer intersected – except sometimes on Facebook, repository of friendships and social medium of choice for my generation.

That wasn’t the only memorable thing that happened that May Day, however. When I got home to the flat, I had an email from my ex husband, saying that he’d received and provisionally accepted an offer on the old family home; obviously my formal agreement was needed, but that was hardly in doubt. The beginning of the real end of that chapter of my life, a summer of driving up and down between here and there, clearing out everything, including the attic where so much of my past had accumulated; helping him initially to move into his new place in Bedford (and in the interim our son and his fiancée from their tiny studio flat in Guildford to a two-storey maisonette), and finally, in October, moving into this house, with one van of stuff transported professionally from the flat, and another trip for me up to Bedford, another rented van loaded and driven down by my daughter’s partner, another drive back southwards in my Micra with another terrified cat in a basket on the passenger seat.

If I’d known on that spring morning that it would be almost another six months before I was finally settled in my own home… well, I don’t know what I would have done. But it happened, all the dusty accumulation of the past, the physical stuff and the emotional clutter which had haunted me, all moved, all resolved, and here I was.

Maybe the stress of that year contributed to my body’s next bombshell – who knows? But I got through that too. And here I stand, and every day, whether May Day or any one of 365 others, the future still knocks on my door.

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Day 29 – Paper Flowers

Wrote this yesterday evening. Spent most of the morning clearing a space on the table from my previous papercrafting projects.

May or may not be finished today – don’t hold your breath!

Tomorrow I will make a paper sunflower.
I have the stamps, the dies,
the coloured paper.
A small act of creation
with glue and pencils, paper, ink
a little effort.

It may not be
a thing of beauty.
Just a pleasant way
to spend the time.
But there are worse things
I could do.

Linda Rushby 29 April 2020
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Day 24 – Dark of the Moon

I woke.
It was dark.

I thought I would get up
and walk to the sunrise.
I stayed in my bed
and listened to the radio.

We all skate on the surface.
We walk on the knife edge.

Don’t look down,
don’t look back.
Shit happens,
keep smiling.
See the bright side.
half-full.
Stop thinking.
Stop doing.

You’ll never do enough.
You’ll never be
good enough.
You’re half full,
half empty.

Sun rises,
sun sets.
Moon wanes,
moon returns.
Spring rolls
into summer.

This is all there is.
Don’t fall off the edge,
Don’t shatter the glass.

Linda Rushby 24 April 2020

Now the words are coming and I can’t stop them – however banal, however dark. Why don’t I just ignore them? Why do I need to write them out? What happens if I don’t? I’m sure I’ve written about this before, somewhere back in the past, in the morass of words I’ve written and then never read again. Do all those unwritten words fester somewhere in the back of my mind? Things that go rotten do one of two things: they infect what’s around them and spread the rot, or they make compost for other things to grow in. What about my thoughts, my words? Which way do they go? Maybe both – but which predominates? They don’t seem to have borne much fruit so far.

Part of me thinks that writing them out helps in a way, it’s therapeutic, it helps to defuse those thoughts – maybe (but they still come back). There might be some value in writing them. But then, what about the next step, is there any point in trying to share them? What is that compulsion that makes me think it’s a good idea? Who reads them, and who of those really hears them, who responds, who finds them interesting, who is repelled by them, who ignores them and moves on? Anybody?

I want to be clear that none of this is directly related to the current situation. They’re just thoughts that come to me even in the best of times (and anyway, as I’ve said, these last few weeks of inactivity have suited me quite well.) Maybe the self-imposed pressure to write poetry has influenced the form that my thoughts are taking in terms of presenting themselves in lines and stanzas, I’m not sure – and the chain of connections from thinking that way, to writing them out, to blogging about them, and so on. Maybe.

Things have happened in the wrong order today. If I’d got up when I woke, at 4.30, how much would I have done already? At least, I would have had breakfast and gone for a walk to the sea. At 5.30 I checked the time for sunrise, and found it was 5.50, so only twenty minutes to get up, dress, make a flask of coffee and get there. I stayed in bed and listened to a play on podcast. Then got up and wrote. No coffee, shower, cat-feeding, yoga/tai chi, breakfast – just this drivel.

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Roads Not Taken

Shopping day disrupts my routine. I had breakfast when I got home, in the garden, trying not to think about the fact that I hadn’t done my yoga/tai chi routine or my writing. Well, does it matter, when these routines are self imposed? That’s the slippery slope, you let yourself off for one day and then down and down you go till suddenly you’re back to… well what? Formless chaos, a sense of emptiness, hopelessness, pointlessness… are there any positive words that end in ‘ness’? Goodness me, I can’t think of any.

There are the things I know need doing, and the tasks I’ve set for myself, and the overwhelming temptation not to do any of them… Just to sit in the sunshine, making another scarf, drinking coffee and eating biscuits, ignoring the weeds pushing up through the gravel and these thoughts popping up into my awareness (oh, note to self, that one’s fairly neutral). Kindness, hopefulness, carefulness, busyness – I wonder why business is spelt the way it is? Or should that be: pronounced the way it is? English is wonderful, actually all languages are wonderful, and fascinating. In some ways I wish I’d followed the path from mathematics into linguistics, rather than into statistics, when I chose my first university course. Maybe if my sixth form had been able to accommodate my wishes to do double maths and German at A level, instead of having to compromise on double maths and economics, I would have done it – though I considered applying for a maths and linguistics course anyway – I can’t remember where that was, but it wasn’t Southampton. The road not taken – I would probably still have ended up going into computer programming after graduation, but I would be in a different place, with different people – and that would have made all the difference – I assume.  But how much of what I’ve done in my life has been down to the inherent personality and characteristics that were laid down in those first eighteen years of life? Maybe things wouldn’t be as different now as I think – different places, different people, yes, but thinking about the last fifteen years or so, the different places and different people don’t seem to make that much difference to the inner me.

Ooh, this a bit deep, and it’s starting to give me vertigo. It goes back to my ideas of the Crystal Space, the paths we take and the ways through the mirrored labyrinth, the network of possibilities, probabilities and improbabilities, the book that I’ll probably never write but that haunts every now and again.

Well, I came back from my shopping expedition and now I seem to have written quite a lot after all.

I’ve even got a poem, of sorts, which I cobbled together yesterday from a cluster of little poems or ideas which had popped up at different times, each too long to be haikus, loosely connected but all a bit rough and ready – as my poetry often is.

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Day 17 – Sonnet for An Introvert

Having already trashed the terza rima, I thought today I’d go for another classic poetic form – the sonnet.

Apologies for the longer final couplet, which I found written (as four lines) in my notebook, scribbled there a few nights ago and promptly forgotten by morning, when I wrote something completely different.

I could have used it another day, but I think it sort of fits (and saves me having to think up another two lines to finish with).

If I can write a poem today.
perhaps the world will go away
and leave me in this happy place
of never meeting face-to-face.

I burrow like a worm or mole
and hide inside this cosy hole
while listening to the radio,
relieved I’ve nowhere else to go.

I do the things I like to do,
and never go and join a queue
(not even one two metres spread)
I buy my milk first thing instead.

Life feels strangely normal – or perhaps it’s normally strange?
That same old déjà vu, coming around again.

Linda Rushby 17 April 2020

PS Just thought I’d add Miko as my ‘featured image’, given that this reflects her philosophy on life as well as mine.

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Passing Time

I was standing in the street in my dressing gown, it was 10.45 and I wondered how come I had slept in so late.

Then I was in bed looking at the clock, and it was 5.17, and I realised I had been dreaming. I was reassured, because that made so much more sense.

Thinking of what to write every day is difficult (except when it isn’t, when it just pops up) but the writing itself is easy.

The days go by so fast, even though I do hardly anything, one day after another, hard to tell the difference. The longer it stays like this, the less I feel inclined to interact with people. Life is so much easier this way. I think it will be a shock when external things start up again. I’ll have to make decisions then, do I make myself go out or do I carry on as I have been doing?

Over the last couple of years, people have said to me: ‘You do such a lot!’ and I’ve thought: no, I don’t, not really. When I listed all the external things I did each day: Monday: swimming, writers, yoga; Tuesday: tai chi; Wednesday: coffee (sometimes) etc etc it might sound like a lot, but it was just me, making myself go out, trying to make myself be sociable because I thought that was what I needed. But I wasn’t DOING anything – I would meet ‘the writers’ in the library, but I would never actually write anything. Now I am staying home and writing, but still I’m not actually writing ‘anything’, just spewing out words. Passing time, revelling in the dullness and emptiness of my life. Sometimes crocheting or weaving, but not to make anything – I’ve unravelled this latest cardigan so many times that by the time it’s finished I’ll probably have made it twice, then it will just go in the wardrobe and I’ll never wear it. The weaving and the weather blanket, both completely pointless (though I’ve promised this year’s weather blanket to my daughter, and I gave last year’s to my son). But the point is in the process of the making – it passes the time and makes me happy. And then there’s killer su doku – can’t even pretend that achieves anything.

The same goes (in spades) for the writing, of course. I’m quite impressed that I’ve kept it going for as long as I have – though in the past I’ve done it for years – why did I give it up? Maybe partly because it takes up a huge amount of time, that’s why the mornings go so fast, and afternoons are always filled up with the radio, so that’s the day gone. It’s interesting, though, to reflect that it’s not these things that make me stressed. I’m calmer and happier now, and that’s because I’m doing these things by myself – these pointless, meaningless things – and I don’t feel like I have to make myself go out and be with people.

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Happy Days

A couple of weeks ago, a friend said to me on Twitter: ‘This must be a good time to be alive for people who don’t like to go out’. Which incensed me because what I’d been saying was that I need to make myself go out and interact with people, because otherwise I’m worried that I will close down and disappear inside myself. Anyway, who was he to tell me how I was feeling?

But, strangely enough, I am enjoying life at the moment – well, I know I wasn’t a few days ago, but that was for other reasons. The relief of not having to think: ‘It’s such and such a day, I need to be there by this time and be with them…’ is actually helping me to relax and accept life. My simple routine is starting to sort out my days. I aim to do my half hour of exercise and meditation, feed the cat and let her out, and be at my computer with a cup of coffee by 8 o’clock – it doesn’t always work out that way, but I don’t beat myself up if it doesn’t. No one is expecting me to be anywhere else.

My health is good, my finances comfortable, my freezer full. The sun is shining; I have breakfast outside every morning after I’ve finished my 500 words – sometimes it’s as late as 11, but it doesn’t really matter. Last week there were three times when I connected with people through Facebook, Zoom or Skype: for meditation, tai chi and my weekly session with my psychotherapist. The fixed points of my routine are more frequently dictated by the radio schedules – 1 o’clock on weekdays for the half hour drama serial on 4 extra, and 3 pm every day for an hour of drama on 4 or 4 extra (though I can always catch up online). I’ve had to go out to the shops on four days out of the last seven, but for now I’m fine, until the milk runs out, which will be about Tuesday.

Having reduced housework to the level of: ‘I’m out of clean knickers, better put a load of washing on’, I’ve caught myself once or twice spontaneously tidying up some small area just to make my living space more pleasant, rather than because I’m frantically looking for something vital – yesterday I even started weeding the garden, and found myself enjoying it – I think partly because it’s quite satisfying to be pulling things out, rather than trying to coax them to grow. I crochet and weave – I tried something new in my weaving the other day, which didn’t work out, so had to undo it, but that’s ok because now I can do it again but better. My paper crafting stuff is all over the kitchen table and has been for weeks now – I keep thinking I’ll do something with it. Might even revive the idea of making a book from the haikus I wrote for NaPoWriMo in 2018.

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All for what?

Lambeth Bridge from Millbank, London

I didn’t go to the beach to photograph the sunrise, though I was awake in time to get there.

Instead I lay in bed, as I do, thinking.

And then it was seven o’clock, and then it was eight o’clock, and I was still lying there. And I thought how pointless everything is, and wouldn’t it be better to just let go, let everything go and stop trying to find reasons to stay alive?

All these stupid tasks I’ve been setting myself, like doing yoga and tai chi and meditation in my spare room, and writing 500 words. All for what? To make me think I’m doing something worthwhile with my days? All that self-bullying that I usually put into getting myself to leave the house I’m now focussing on creating a ‘structure’ for my life (though not on housework, no, never on that). And I resent it just as much, and find reasons for telling myself how pointless it all is, nobody’s making me do it but myself, so why shouldn’t I just lie in bed all day hating myself and feeling miserable, because that feels like the easiest and most natural thing in the world. After all, it’s what I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember, why change the habits of a lifetime? And now there’s no one to judge me for it but myself (and anyone who happens to read this, of course).

Someone said in a private message last week that I ‘torture’ myself. Well, why not? Maybe I deserve it. Maybe it’s all I know how to do.

While I was sitting on my cushion I thought about being on Millbank, upriver from Tate Britain, leaning on the wall and looking at the river and the new spring shoots on the plane trees, unfurling between the bobbles of last year’s seeds. I feel as though I have been there many times on lovely spring days taking photographs in the sunshine, and later crossing Vauxhall Bridge and going to the café which I can never remember the name of, but it’s also an antique showroom, and sitting outside drinking coffee surrounded by quirky statuary and old garden equipment, hiding from the noise and stink of buses. I’ve been going there for years, but I know it was still there last summer (maybe not the next time I go though, if there is a next time).

Hiding and running away are two sides of the same coin – yes, yes, I know, I know, I repeat myself, keep churning out the same old nonsense time after time. So why can’t I repeat the ‘good’ stuff? How the f*ck do I know? I don’t have control over what pops into my head. It’s all just bollox anyway, whatever I say.

I was planning to venture out again when I run out of milk – which will probably be today, or maybe I can stretch it out till tomorrow. Fact is, I don’t really want to any more.