PINK PLASTIC GUITAR

Wow.  The post below was from November 2021.  Yep.  That's how I felt...for about a year.  I didn't publish it.  I didn't realise I had felt like that for so long.  I thought it just came on suddenly, but now I realise it had been building for awhile.  I broke not too long after that.  My husband and family were rightly concerned I wasn't doing well.  But I still clung on this senseless idea that I "should be fine now."  We had survived, gotten through all the awfulness of 2020 (the least of which was Trump, I mean, seriously??? How could that be the least???).  I eventually went to the doctor, and got a counsellor, and just kept telling her (from my couch over Zoom), "But we have a new home, a new country, a new church, a new community, a new group of group of friends--everything is fine now!  I should be fine!"  But I was VERY not fine.  I got help.  And slowly that help started to make days worth living again.  And now it's Spring again.  And I can't get over the Hope I feel in each new green thing, blooming flower, and my two new squishes of a niece and nephew I get to meet at the end of the summer.  Parenting my own two girls is not easier this year than last.  They are whirlwinds to be reckoned with.  But when they went back to school yesterday after having two weeks off for Easter, I missed them.  I didn't sit on the couch in my pjs and cry or zone out and forget to eat until five minutes before they came home.  I revelled in the sunshine yesterday.  I enjoyed the day.  I took some rest, and did some chores, I cooked and dog walked, I read my Bible and prayed.  And today, I wrote this:

Senses

little old doggy snores during their morning nap time. birds chirruping strong and loud outside the window, dive bombing and flitting to and fro. wind gently disturbing the newly green branches of spring clothed trees. the foggy outline of the hills across the valley, as the clouds lightly obscure with a gentle blanket of white and grey.  giggles and chattering of students as a school group meanders down the path. cosy inside of my fluffy fuzzy oversized hoodie; a slight chill pervading the outside air—the sun has yet to break through this cheery but bleak spring day.

I haven't written anything since that November, and I realised today I missed it.  I used to thrive on writing, creating pictures with my words, and I had forgotten the joy of that.  So here I am: if the below post is you today, I'm here to encourage you to get some help.  I'm so thankful I had a family who were there to notice I was not ok.

November 2021: an unpublished post

 someone said, when you're having a down day, create something.  i can't create anything--art wise--other than write.  i'm not even sure that's art really.  maybe it's just journaling, i don't know.  all i know is that I'm tired.  that this pandemic has taken it all out of me.  all the will to "go out," help, smile, get to know people.  i'm good.  i'm good on my couch with netflix, and going on walks alone with my dogs.  i'm good. i don't need to see people, make friends, or do more.  i'm good: just watching the days play out and roll out endlessly.  i'm good.  am i happy? well that's not the same thing is it.  i don't know anymore.  i feel like this bullshit pandemic has taken whatever i had left of my "go out and get it."  whatever "it" was has up and left.  i feel like it has taken my joy, my friendships, my marriage even. fuck it's taken my will to live. hell i don't even want therapy any more--what good would it do to help work out my shit and talk to someone who will help me when i feel like to truly feel all this would actually just take the last will to live out of my day to day life. haze.  i want a haze.  honestly, i just want to not care about anything anymore. i want to not care how lonely i am, how i wish someone noticed/saw me, how i can't talk to anyone about all the things that worry me because i'm also worried about my husband's mental health and honestly he can't take it.  shit. nothing is actually wrong. my life is fine. i am fucking blessed. so why do i feel like shit. why do i just wanna cry all the time? it can't be grief for my Mame or my uncle, honestly, because i loved them but distantly, like you love extended family you barely knew. it's so much worse than that.  it's just self pity. that's what it feels like. self pity. or just a drop in dopamine.  maybe i just need to get laid more.  it all feels like a 1% problem--like i just need to "pull myself up by my boot straps." cause really. what do i have to complain about? emotions? irish people don't even believe in those. maybe i should be irish.  i just want to be less. if i were less i would be ok. i wouldn't feel all these big emotions.  i tell my girls big emotions are ok--but no one tells me that. maybe i don't believe it.  maybe i'm just lying to them to get them through childhood and then the world is gonna eat them up--because the world doesn't give a flying fuck about your big emotions. you just gotta shove that shit down. go to work. get on with it. i don't even know why i feel like this. i just don't wanna feel like this alone. and even that pisses me off. i wish i had some sort of addiction, then at least i wouldn't have to feel this way--i could just concentrate getting "it." this is stupid. 

Today I was delivering a parcel, and the lady receiving it said, "You always deliver with a smile." She was trying to clear the end of her drive from snow, because she knew I'd be dropping her parcel off soon, and even helped me reverse safely into the road to get back on my way.  It made my day! It made my day because, I actually TRY to deliver every parcel with a smile! I know these are hard, lonely, isolating times, and any kindness or joy we can spread is essential.   More people have chatted to me from their doorways than would probably have ever bothered talking before, and it helps me feel less lonely every time they do.  

This time last year I was teaching 6-8 yoga sessions a week, looking forward to adding more in the near future.  I felt confident about my job, how I was doing it, and my ability to continue.  Now I am teaching one class a week via Zoom, and thinking about adding MAYBE two in the near future.  I have picked up work from a dear friend, and now work delivering for Hermes part time.  I'm still just as passionate about yoga, but I don't have the same confidence I will be able to continue to do it as a job.  I don't have the same confidence in my ability to teach, even though I know people keep tuning in once a week.  

This past year has sucked away a lot of what I felt was important to me being me.  My community--we had to move, and most of the people that lived nearby also had to move to find new jobs. My faith community--we can't go to church, or small groups. My family--by the time I see my family again it will have been 2 years, and my in-laws we have only seen in brief meetings, without seeing cousins or siblings at all.  

Chatting to friends about this yesterday, we mentioned how we all feel we are in a holding period, just waiting and waiting to see where we'll end up.  After leaving a job and a community that felt so purpose-driven, it can feel hard to work a job that often is pretty much "contactless" and seen as "essential," but feels isolated and lonely.  I want to bring my mission to every job I do, even if it isn't what I'd love to be doing at the time.  

I heard on BBC radio 4 today, that a man was going to try to do a random act of kindness every day in February--and I wondered what it would be like if that was my every day? So I will keep on smiling as I deliver your parcel, and chatting to your in your doorway, and delivering yoga classes via zoom from my messy living room, and hopefully one day, I'll have the courage to invite you out for a walk (or you could invite me!). I want this year to be focused on being truly kind to others, because just sitting around being sad about what is lost is, well, just all kinds of sad, and sometimes a little kindness can make someone's day.

 This is my first post in almost two years.  I can't tell you why I stopped writing really. I will say these past couple of years haven't been easy.  We adopted Little K, and from pretty much the first week I knew I was in for the hardest haul of my life.  Bonding with her has been the hardest thing I've ever done--harder than losing my first baby.  Parenting a child who has experienced trauma, who continues to interact with me sometimes in a distant, almost fearful way, still preferring Dave to me every moment, and trying to love them equally to the child that grew in my belly has been...actually I can't even explain it to you, but some of you who have experienced this know.  Let me just say this, that "God is love," is not an easy truth.  Loving, is not an easy thing.  Listening to a sermon today, the pastor said, "When we enter into a relationship, we are risking everything...faith is giving ourselves over to something larger than ourselves, and risking it being wrong."  That's my every day.  I'm giving myself over to this journey of life and parenting in all this mess, and I'm risking it being wrong.  I love this journey, and I hate this journey.  I hate that it is so hard.  I hate that I mess up EVERY DAMN DAY.  But I gotta say, if it wasn't for God, I would have walked away by now. Day two, I would have walked away. 

Right now K is playing legos and smiling up at me in her adorable outfit she's wearing today. She has finally gotten used to jeans, and looks so grown up and cute in them! But earlier today, as she was yelling "no no no. I don't want to do church, I hate God" in my face (even though her virtual "church" is playing pictionary and singing and dancing to worship songs and listening to a Bible story), and "Never, I'll never do that" when I asked her to wash her hands, it took everything I had to just to say "It's ok.  God loves you even if you don't love Him. Let's just try it out."  

1 John 4:7-12 is a powerful statement. This is that passage in The Message version of the Bible:

7-10 My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.

11-12 My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!

 Another minister said, "What you promise when you are confirmed (trust in God, and say you want to be a Christian) is that this is the story in which you will wrestle forever." We cannot confuse certainty with faith. Fostering, adopting, loving, marrying, parenting, friending, risking everything every day in everything we do--that is the hard love, that is the TRUE love, of God. GOD IS LOVE.  

I don't know if you read all that, but I just wanted you to know.  God is in all this mess. Even if you are yelling at him "NO NO NO, I HATE YOU GOD, I DON'T BELIEVE, I WON'T BELIEVE,"today.  He still loves you, and He's waiting for you to let Him hold you, and start that journey of wrestling with His story every day. 

Maybe I'll try and get on here more often.  I'll try and put my failures to one side and write anyway.  In all the mess.

 

Being kind is hard.  Being truly generous of spirit, open, vulnerable, these gifts don't come without walking through life being broken and beaten up, and still continuing to walk in hope.  As I scroll through Instagram and Facebook, most of the time I don't feel a whole lot (sometimes anger--politics does that to me).  But there are several women who always draw me in with their posts.  They're not perfect, they're always raw and honest, and inviting the same.  Some of these women I don't actually have a very close friendship with, but they draw me in like a moth to a flame.
Liz is artistic, musically and so many other ways.  She is the picture of heartfelt.  Always serving and giving, and living the hard life with people.  I still have a hand-created memory book she made me for my first pregnancy.  It is beautifully created with her own art.  I had a miscarriage, and that was devastating.  But I still keep that book and smile when I come across it, because so much love was poured into making it.
Jodi is athletic, organised, passionate, and health-conscious.  She speaks up in her community to serve others, to help others see people and their stories.  She raises a great group of kids, and pursues her health in a gracious and loving way.  She is always being pulled a million directions, but makes you feel like she has time for you, to really see you.
Beth is compassionate, full of laughter, the most giving person I know.  She loves everyone and their kids.  Especially kids.  She talks to kids like they are the most important people in the room--she really listens, and gets excited about what they are excited about.  She has big dreams, and even though there are a lot of roadblocks on the way to those dreams, she never stops trying.
These women inspire me to be kinder.  They love their families, communities, and the world around them.  Thank you for living out loud my friends!