Solent Green – blog

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Conditional love

I had a lot to say yesterday but stopped at 500 words. Then I kept on thinking. But what was I thinking about?

Yesterday I called my True Self a bitch – which may be a little unfair. She’s just… I didn’t really hear from her much last night. I woke about half four, got up and had the last of my antibiotics and a drink of water, played a programme on iPlayer, dozed off at some point then woke up before the end and tried to rewind but couldn’t get the touch screen on my phone to respond properly (common problem),finally managed to get it back further than I wanted to then played to the end and by this time it was getting on for 7, so got up and sorted out a few things in the bedroom then had breakfast, hung the washing out, came on here and faffed about some more.

I started thinking about despair yesterday. It was very strong yesterday morning. Where does it come from and why? What is the shape of it? Absence of love. Inability to accept love because it is directed at the lover’s perception of who I am, not the true me. The true me is loved by no one, including me. All love is conditional on conforming to the lover’s idea of who I should be.

The sense that when I’m giving of myself, the truest I can be, the ideas, feelings, thoughts inside me, everything  I have to offer is not wanted, not understood, rejected, ignored, discarded. Valueless. If no one else can see and value who I am, how can I?  I am lost, I am nothing.

When I was young I hoped one day that someone would understand me, see me for who I am. I can only be myself, after all, I can’t be anyone else. So love me for who I am. But who ever wants to do that? Instead they would rather tell me the person they love is me. But then what happens when they see the true me? When they realise I can’t live up to their idea? They get angry and tell me to stop being like this, they want me to be like that. Love is conditional on my ability to live up to what they want. This is the crux of everything.

I have tried for so long. And I get angry and frustrated and afraid and lonely. Because who am I really? Who am I if I can’t be who you want me to be? I can only be myself.

So, I will be myself. I will do everything I can to be myself. People will not like this. They will try to ‘help’ me, to ‘encourage’ me, but they won’t succeed. I will be myself and I will write about my true feelings. I can’t write short stories or novels or funny little snippets. I will write about myself and they won’t read it, but that’s fine.

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Madwoman in the Attic

If I was going to write, how would I start?

I had the beginning of a poem earlier when I was watering the plants, if I can remember what it was:

If you could see me as I am…? Something like that.

But it’s gone now. Bugger.

Anyway, no one sees me as I am. That’s the point. The old chestnut.

If I keep picking and picking and picking away at this, will it ever lead on to something else, some kind of breakthrough or revelation?

Wish I could remember that effing poem. It’s gone now. It had a good rhythm to it, and some internal rhymes. Something about: ‘…where the broken rivers run…’ I remember thinking – how can a river break? But it didn’t matter because it fitted. Bloody obscurity for its own sake, that’s what it was. And ‘through the cracks between the pavement…’

About the real me who is inescapable and always torments me but no one can ever see it/her.

You see, the myth is that when you find your True Self, everything will make sense and you’ll find peace. Except my True Self is a bitch. The more I get to know her the worse it all gets. She’s the one who makes me cry in the night with despair, but I can’t stop her or ignore her or get away from her because she’s me.

And if I say: ‘I will accept myself as I am’ that means accepting her. If I can’t root her out I can never find peace. But the more I dig away at her, the deeper the wound she leaves. So what does it mean to accept her?

Accepting loneliness. Accepting anger. Letting go of the dream of ‘love’, but without resentment.

The path of acceptance feels like the path of papering over the cracks. Or perhaps a better metaphor, filling in the cracks in the pavement with wet mud, which dries out and crumbles or washes away in the rain. I remember doing that as a child, over and over again. It never worked, but I kept on playing at it. Till I got bored and gave up. Which, of course, is what I always do.

Can I escape into meditation? How deep into that despair do you have to go to find a place where you can rest in emptiness?

The woman who cries in the night is trapped – labyrinth, hall of mirrors, which is the correct metaphor? Or that one from the Cat Stevens song when you end up back where you started?

Whatever, she is in a trap: she cries for love, but when she cries no one can love her. So she cries for the knowledge that she will never find the love she craves. Because love is always partial and conditional: ‘We will love you on condition that you stay happy and don’t give in to despair.’

So the despair has to be hidden away. The Madwoman in the Attic. She’s still there.

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Emails

I am going back to my ‘secret’ blog, had enough of telling people how I feel. This will have to do.

I didn’t write yesterday. Instead I spent an hour and a half deleting and/or opening over 3,500 emails which hadn’t been opened on my yahoo account. The oldest were from September 2017, which I guess was the last time I had a purge. Which I suppose means that I average about 400 a month that I don’t bother to open – 100 a week, or 14 a day, which sounds about right because I counted how many I got yesterday and it was 15.

I keep unsubscribing from lists, but there are always some where you want to keep getting them because every so often there’s a good offer or something. Like Travelzoo. I bought a special spa deal which I have to take before the end of July but haven’t fixed it up yet.

Mornings are always hard. It’s the time when the self-hate and desperation are really at their peak. I don’t know why that is. I was told by Michael from the School of Philosophy group in Peterborough that whatever you’re thinking/feeling when you fall asleep at night is what you wake up thinking/feeling, so be careful what you think about before you go to sleep. What a load of bollox! If you were trying to control what you were thinking about before you went to sleep, how would you ever get to sleep? And then if/when you wake up in the middle of the night, presumably you again have to control your thoughts before the precise moment you fall back to sleep – whenever that may be! Maybe it works for him, but it certainly doesn’t for me.

I read or heard something recently saying that it helps depressed people if they make a to do list for the next day before they go to sleep – or maybe that’s insomniacs? Whatever, both those apply to me anyway.

My to-do for today: wait in for delivery of yarn that is finally coming (yay!) two weeks after the order – it came yesterday when I was out at lino printing but I didn’t know because the email saying it would arrive between 10 and 12 came at 10.17 and then it was delivered (or not) at 10.39, and I didn’t read either of them till after lino finished at 12.00. It said redelivery would be tried today, but I don’t know if I’ll get an email today and if so how helpful it will be.

Now I’ve got the yahoo sorted out I will have a go at the gmail, which is not so bad, only a couple of hundred. Then I should go into Thunderbird and sort out the damson-tree ones, which are mostly forwarded to gmail. But there is always tons and tons of spam on those. I can’t have them on Outlook because it doesn’t like the servers. But forwarding them to gmail means they’re always duplicated.

Bugger. Word’s wordcount includes numbers, but the one on WordPress doesn’t.

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Sunday, 03 June 2018

I don’t know how to start, what to think, what to say, what to do.

Sometimes I face the world and it all seems like such a mess. If I list all the things: my cat is sick; I don’t know if I can go away and leave her; my camper van needs a lot of work; I have to prepare a talk for the book fair; I said I would edit this book but I’ve done nothing and I don’t feel like doing anything; I’ve lost my memory stick; I have tendonitis in my wrist; I am sad, I am afraid, I am lonely, I get angry a lot of the time, mainly at myself; I don’t cook properly for myself; I am bad at doing housework; I am not writing; there are so many things I need to sort out.

I make a list like that and then what? Oh and my typing has got really bad. I keep looking at the keyboard and don’t notice all the stupid mistakes I’m making.

Perhaps, that’s a metaphor, I am looking at the keyboard and don’t look at the results of what I’m doing. Trying to observe. I’m not using the little fingers very often, I don’t know if that’s an issue. Little finger (right side) should be apostrophe and @ sign and question mark I guess from looking at the keyboard, and ‘enter’ too, I don’t know which digit I naturally use for enter. And shift for any keys which are to the left of the keyboard. That should be ‘on’ the left, because ‘to’ the left implies they are not actually on the keyboard. And I keep pressing additional keys without realising it, particularly number keys.

I just did ‘enter’ and my natural response was to use the right index finger, which is odd because that is the furthest left of that hand.

So that time I made a point of using the little finger.

(But I still got it wrong and hit ‘#’ at the first attempt.)

This is crazy, I got up at 6.00 to write and this is what I’m writing. I am not writing anything worthwhile, just drivel, but what does it matter if all I write is drivel? It could be the greatest prose in the world and still no one would read it.

I have a pain in my side. I think it’s because I’m trying to sit up straight and look at the screen instead of the keyboard while I’m typing. I’m used to slouching. And what does any of it matter? It doesn’t, of course. But this is how I write. I write in well-formed, well-structured sentences, and I spell correctly, because that is how I think, that is how it comes into my head. If I wanted to write ‘badly’ it would be an effort, I would have to work at it and it would be false. That’s not what I do. I write what comes into my head.

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Bank holiday

It is a beautiful morning. Looking to set the record as the hottest May Day Bank Holiday ever. I will go out, but I will do some jobs first. Including writing this.

Woke at 6, read for a while, did my yoga and meditation. Have to clear all my stuff out of the van, but I can’t do that till tomorrow when the garage opens and I can get my keys. Although I guess I could call Darren’s mobile and get them from him. Really I should have got them on Friday afternoon but didn’t think about it till it was so late I couldn’t be bothered.

What am I doing? Who am I? Why am I obsessed with people seeing me as I see myself? I don’t know. Obsessed with demonstrating that I am who I am, not who they want me to be, or I might want me to be. Chaotic, lazy, irresponsible, unattractive, selfish, self-obsessed, clumsy, incompetent, disorganised. Why can’t I just be? If other people can’t accept me for who I am, how can I accept myself? I’ve tried to change, honestly I have tried so many times to live up to their unrealistic expectations, tried to believe it was possible to become that better person, brave, strong, hard-working, competent, attractive etc etc etc, all those things I’m not. I’ve really tried, but now I’ve had enough, enough of that stress, that pressure. I want to let it all go and just be who I am without feeling I have to justify myself, without having to be ashamed of myself constantly, always afraid of being found out, of failing, of disappointing them – I mean, I’m used to being disappointed by me, I’ve learnt to lower my expectations of myself, I know who I am.

Trying to be better, trying to be successful, trying to be kinder, more generous, more sociable, more conscientious, not letting everything slide like this. I’ve had enough of all that, it just makes me miserable knowing that everything I try is futile.

I want to be free. What does that mean? Free of any expectation, free of any commitments. What would I do? Is that really what I want? Would I be alone, scared, lonely? All those things, but aren’t they the main conditions of my existence? To be alone, scared and lonely? At least I wouldn’t have to pretend, wouldn’t have to push myself to do the things I don’t want to do, to take care of myself.

There is no answer to that. We all have to take care of our own needs to some extent. Otherwise, life would become… what? Where am I going with this? How have I got to this point? I need a coffee. I will go downstairs and make coffee.

So, coffee made, I need to write another fifty words. What is the answer? There isn’t one, clearly, there never has been and I just can’t change. How do I get round that? How do I cut through these feelings and move on? It’s no good just asking questions if there aren’t any answers.

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Long drive

Just finished my last four NaPoWriMo haiku – only 5 days late! Been at Laura’s and only got back yesterday. I didn’t have my laptop – but more to the point I couldn’t get my head into a place where I could write. I had ideas for two of them – they came to me when I was driving, one when I was driving to Laura’s and one when I was driving to the self-publishing conference in Leicester. I had them both complete in my head at the time but didn’t write them down in my notebook and they went. Still I have managed to recreate them and one is actually better than what I had before because I took a slightly different tack. I had one leftover from the boat which I will throw in and another I wrote this morning from scratch, about bluebells. It’ll do.

I really enjoyed the conference, got back fired up and full of enthusiasm but that all seems to have gone after a week.

I was intending to come home on Tuesday, got everything packed up and loaded into the car, then we went to Coleman’s Craft Warehouse and the Needle and Awl for lunch and then we both got an email from Simon about Laura taking him and Dina from Brian’s to Heathrow on Friday. They’d talked about it ages ago but Laura had forgotten the date and hadn’t got Friday off work. Brian couldn’t take them because he’s going to pick them up and anyway didn’t want to leave the dogs alone in the house the first day they were there. So I said I could stay till Friday and take them then drive home from Heathrow.

I could have done without it because it meant I had to miss lino and my therapy session on Thursday. When I picked them up Simon was in a foul mood about being picked up at 7.00, because his sat nav said it would only take 1 hour 15 minutes, and their flight wasn’t till 11.40. We’d tried explaining to him that it would take 3 hours if we left at 8, but he wasn’t having any of it. I was pissed off because I’d messed up my week to do it and didn’t get a word of thanks or acknowledgement and he started a pointless argument because he said I’d told him the wrong exit from the M25 last time we came up and the sat nav sent him a different way on Thursday. (I didn’t, I got to the bottom of it which was that I told him I didn’t know the exit number but I still directed us off the right exit to the M1, but it wasn’t worth arguing over especially as I was driving. Usual thing as with Laura, I’m the one who has to back down because for me to keep arguing my case until I convince them I’m right would be childish and unnecessary and then it would all be my fault).

Eventually, when things had gone quiet for a while, I said, hopefully in a not-too-argumentative voice: ‘I missed my lino printing and therapy session yesterday to do this for you’ and he had calmed down a bit though I don’t think he actually apologised. Then part of the M25 was closed, he was following it on google maps and it sent us off through the wilds of Bucks and Surrey, eventually getting onto the M4 and returning to the M25 and Heathrow that way, I dropped them at 9.40 then thought I would find somewhere to stop on the way home. Drove into the Starbucks (used to be Little Chef) on the A3 before Guildford, but the car park was full (I don’t like Starbucks anyway) so decided I would keep on to the McDonald’s at Petersfield, saw a National Trust sign for the Witley Centre, pulled off the A3 and followed it but then found it was just a patch of woodland, very nice but no café; then pulled off at Petersfield but it was the wrong exit, thought if I went through the town and followed the signs back to the A3 it must be that one, but it wasn’t, I missed it altogether, kept driving and got home at 11.25 – almost 5 hours driving which has  to be a record.

When I got home the house stank of cat pee and I just sat and cried.

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Van update

A full half hour this morning, 10 minutes yoga and twenty meditation. Quite calm in the meditation too, not so much rumination, more focussing. It’s a good thing. Eaten breakfast, even did a bit of tidying up in the kitchen, and it’s only 8.15. Lino printing this morning so I will try to get to McDonald’s for breakfast. And the virus thingy isn’t running today so I can see the word count.

I hadn’t got any clean pants because they were all in the washing basket (post-washing) which was down in the kitchen, so I put my jeans on and have been walking around without them, but just went to the loo and put them on. Funny this whole thing of writing and posting every day but putting in things that I wouldn’t really want anyone to read. It’s there, anyone who wanted to could read it if they knew the address, but hardly anyone ever reads the other blog where I do share the address, so I feel quite safe.

I called the man about the camper van yesterday – I can’t remember what I said in yesterday’s post, but this was the note that got shoved through my door two years ago when the van was broken into and he left me his number. I spoke to him and he was very interested and went down to the garage and saw it, and Charles at the garage was very helpful (so he told me, when he rang me back as I was just walking home from Sainsbury’s yesterday afternoon. Actually it wasn’t just Sainsbury’s, I mean I hadn’t just been to Sainsbury’s, I went to the seafront and walked along though the wind was really strong, blowing up sand from the beach in my face. The temperature was supposed to be 11, I don’t know what the wind chill was but I’m guessing it was in single figures, which compared with last week’s 25 plus is bizarre – well, to be honest it’s last week’s temperatures that are bizarre, this is more normal).

Anyway, it looks quite hopeful about the van, I think he’ll buy it but he wants to get some other mechanics that he uses to have a look at it, which is fair enough.

So that may be one crisis resolved in my life. Other things are worrying but I will have to hold on to them for now. I texted the lady I rent the garage from and she replied straight away. The guy who’s buying the van asked if the garage would be available as well, she said it’s not automatic, which I knew anyway, and that she wants to meet him etc etc which I half expected because she is a bit of a stickler.

Well that’s the situation this morning, nothing very deep today, I guess I’m feeling quite upbeat and that is why. Looking forward to lino. I might even post some pictures from my lino on here. On here rather than Facebook I think, for now.

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End of the road?

Why does my computer say it’s ‘running a virus’ scan and refusing to show me my word count for this document in Word? I mean, I’ve hardly written anything, but as I’ve done the thing of copying and pasting my horoscope into the document, I want to know how many words that is, so I can subtract them from the total and see whether I’ve written 500 or not – only now I’ve written so much that if it shows the word count it will include what I’ve just written as well…

Aha, so that was 91. It’s still not showing me the overall word count though.

I’ve had a stressful 24 hours because yesterday I had to go to the garage to find out why my camper van failed the MOT and it’s not great. They wouldn’t even give me an estimate of how much it will cost and to be honest I just want rid of it. It’s sad, but realistically it’s not like I’ve used it much. I didn’t go away with it at all last year, other than out for days at the country park, well there was a reason for that, but with going to visit the kids such a lot I can’t see myself going away in it this year either. So I just have to say: it was a nice idea, but it just didn’t work out, cut my losses and let it go.

My son in law originally said he’d like it to go fishing with when I didn’t want it any more, but this is not a great time because they’re focussing all their time and money on the house at the moment, and also they’ve just bought a trailer tent, so don’t want a van as well cluttering up the drive. I wondered about SORNing it till he wants it, but who knows how long that would be, and I don’t want to keep paying rent for a garage for it every month.

I was thinking, if I walk to the seafront I can get some exercise, sunshine, fresh air and maybe fish and chips, but it’s just started raining so maybe not.

Keep watching the stupid Yoda/Seagull Song bad lip-reading video that someone posted on Facebook, it just makes me laugh, it’s so silly. Shared it with Geoff, who I used to work with at Granada over 30 years ago, because I knew it would make him laugh too.

I just don’t want to write. Didn’t do my yoga/meditation this morning because I came on the computer and started looking up the Romahome Owners Club site to advertise it on there. There is a guy who’s interested in it, it’s a bit of a story but two years ago, when I was living in Beach Road, it got broken into and this man put a note through my door saying he also had one and his had also been damaged and did I want to chat about finding spares etc. Anyway, it turns out I still had the note (amazing!) and I rang him this morning and it sounds like he might be interested. I told him I wanted £500 because honestly I don’t know what it will cost to MOT it and I just want rid. He said he would go to the garage this afternoon and have a look at it so I’m waiting to hear.

I think it might have stopped raining, so if I’ve done 500 words I might go out after all.

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The Crystal Space

I went to my first kundalini yoga class last night. When I walked in, the teacher said:

‘You must be Lynn!’

‘LinDA’ I corrected her. ‘My name’s Linda.’ I’ve always disliked beng called ‘Lynn’. When I was a kid, I hated it, because I knew lots of Lindas and lots of Lynns in my school, and, well, if I was called Lynn I wouldn’t expect anyone to call me Linda, would I? These days I’m a bit more tolerant, but I still prefer being called by my actual name.

‘Oh, okay, Linda’ she said, with emphasis on the second syllable, but a smile on her face. Then the next time she addressed me she called me ‘Lynn’, and continued to do so right through the class. I didn’t bother arguing, but at the end, one of the other ladies said: ‘Are you Lynn or Linda?’ and I said, ‘actually, it’s Linda’ and the teacher said: ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve been getting it wrong all the way through haven’t I? My memory’s terrible’ and I smiled and said: ‘that’s ok’ because what’s the point of getting arsey about it?  But I was glad the other lady had brought it up.

The class itself was a mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar but definitely worth doing. There was quite a bit of chanting – which I don’t mind – and breaks between postures, but the poses themselves were pretty tough and held for quite a long time (I always went for the easy versions). Also some of the breathing was different from what I’m used to and quite hard to get right. The meditation wasn’t as guided as I’d been expecting – I may have to find another group for that – but it was all nicely balanced and the 90 minutes went surprisingly quickly.

And I did my half hour this morning, as well as going to tai chi later (actually I need to go in a few minutes so probably won’t finish writing and posting this before I go.)

I think the kundalini is going to be good for me. The thing it reminds me of most of all is the original yoga classes I went to from 1990 onwards, back in Turvey when Laura was a baby. That was Iyengar, and we didn’t do any chanting, but there was a lot of emphasis on the breath and also a long relaxation at the end – and it was an hour and a half.

So, now back from tai chi, and supping tea with my friend Ali. Sometimes, you know, I think my life is pretty amazing. Other times, not so much – but why not? What makes the difference?

I was thinking last night about an idea that came out of the meditation group in Bedford, years ago when I was first separated from my husband – I wrote about it in my blog and will have to look it up to be sure, but it came from a mishearing of something said by the teacher. I think it was ‘the crystal space’ – I thought he said it, but when I spoke to him later he didn’t know what I was talking about. It seemed to be a space of possibilities, where everything was open and life could lead in any direction, but the whole thing was about liberation.

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Why I’ll never make it as a writer (or anything else for that matter)

I really don’t like Oscar Cainer. He writes this twaddle that really doesn’t mean anything, it’s so mealy-mouthed. Not a patch on his late Uncle Jonathan.

What has happened the last few days and what is my excuse for not writing? Today… slept in late, did my half hour of yoga and meditation, had breakfast… now it’s lunchtime and I’ve done bugger all. Every day the same.

It’s a nice day too. A friend came round to mow my lawn for me yesterday afternoon, and I thought: the garden’s a mess, now the fence is up I should get on with it and sort it out, but oh well… take the laptop and go to the Coffee Cup? That was sort of the plan. I really should go to the sea this afternoon instead of sitting around here, or if I’m going to stay in I should get on with some jobs.

You see, they say: ‘…don’t get caught up with all the “shoulds”…’, but seriously, if you keep on ignoring the ‘shoulds’ then everything goes to pot. Well, what would make me happy? Should (there I go again) I do something that will make me ‘happy’, and if so, what? I do neither. I sit here ruminating (that’s a good word. My therapist used it a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to describe these thinking patterns, and I thought: yes that’s it! Of course I’ve heard it before, but not used it lately, and now I’ve sort of latched on to it).

I rang the lady who does the kundalini yoga and meditation at the community centre – it’s literally just round the corner – been going to check it out for months and putting it off. She sounded really friendly and happy that I was interested. It might turn out to be a bit new-age and hippy-dippy, how do I feel about that? Well, I’m conflicted, aren’t I?

This came up with the therapist. When I was looking after the dogs, I went to see her in Guildford, where she works some of the time. I was sitting where I could see out of the window and I kept seeing magpies, so then I had to explain about why I say ‘Good morning sir, how’s your wife?’ when I see them. She was intrigued by this, and at the end of the session (and again since) she commented that I seem to be almost desperate to find something to believe in. Which is a not-unreasonable observation. But… and there I go, reading my horoscope every day and having tarot readings, while simultaneously thinking: ‘this is all such a load of bollocks!!!’

Yesterday I had reading group in the morning, that’s why I didn’t write then, I ran out of time. Haven’t even been posting my daily haiku, but that’s partly because the memory stick is in the laptop which is downstairs and I’m up here in the study. Sorry, just realised I wrote: ‘reading’ group, not ‘writing’ group, that’s really strange, I wonder why? But yesterday afternoon, after getting home and before Richard came to cut the grass, I set up a Twitter account for the group (and Instagram, though no idea what I’m going to do with that), and did a few things to the Facebook page, but now that has died a death again, I mean, I can’t get any enthusiasm for doing it.

I followed something from Twitter about ‘Nine Daily Habits You Should Get Rid of to Become a Better Writer’ and of course  I do them all – well, maybe not all (I don’t do 6), but 1, 2, 4, 8 and 9 are pretty much intrinsic to my personality and lifestyle – so clearly there is no hope for me.

1.       Not sticking to the writing plan – PLAN??? Moi? You must be joking.

2.       Giving in to procrastination and self-criticism – Ermmm… enough said.

3.      Thinking over some paragraphs or dialogues when you are not writing –  when they come to me I can’t always wait, I sort them out in my head and write later;

4.     Writing without enough sleep – definitely – it’s unavoidable, that’s how I live;

5.    Giving someone to read your unfinished book – I did that once and it set me back 4 years – these days I read bits out at group but I think that’s helpful;

6.    Limiting yourself with one place for writing – no, I do vary that;

7.    Dividing your time to 2 or more storylines at once – oh god, yes – currently there’s sorting out the sequel to ‘Single To Sirkeci’; maybe doing something about Prague; trying (not very hard) to think of stories for the two groups; and the great novel which is still on the back burner, where it’s been for about twelve years (or arguably twenty five);

8.    Isolating yourself from family and friends- ditto 4;

9.    Having bad nutrition and drinking too much coffee or energy drinks – also ditto 4.