Daily Prompt: Moved to Tears

Daily Prompt: Moved to Tears
On most days something will happen to bring tears to my eyes… It might be a piece of music or the clouds drifting peacefully at sunset, or the faces of my grandchildren when they see me. Usually the tears are ‘good’ones and fall easily because of beauty or grace. But sometimes – as just now – they are acid tears. They hurt and sting my eyes and refuse to flow, burning as they form – hot and unforgiving. It is as if they want to cause to my skin the pain I’m feeling in my heart.
I am SO disappointed… disappointed and frustrated. I am angry and bitter and wanting to rip out my chest. I want to shake those I love, and tell them to leave me the hell alone because I can’t prop them up anymore. I can’t do this daily grind anymore! I am sick and tired of being strong and wise and expected to keep it all together. Nothing I try ever works, money eludes me whatever I do, and I hate the voice in my head that tells me life is hopeless and that I am fooling myself.
These are not ‘good’ tears. These tears are from the deepest recesses of my heart – and they hurt.

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Musing on Motherhood…

Walking in the evening sun just now, it came to me that if I had chosen to live a life that experienced many facets of motherhood, I think I could say that’s exactly what I’ve done!

I’ve been a young mother and an old mother, a mother married to the father of my children, and a mother married to the stepfather of my children.  I’ve been a single mother for many long and lonely years, and a mother too scared to ever try again. I’ve had a child with cancer and a child who tested me beyond my limits with the power of their personality and anger, and I’ve had a child with autism who taught me how to live and love again.  I’ve parented a child with chronic fatigue and depression, a child involved with drugs and teenage pregnancy, and I’ve been there when my child was attacked by their father, and had to run away in the night to start all over again.

Sometimes I think it’s a miracle I’m not insane, but then again I think perhaps I am – a little. Sometimes I’m glad for it all because the experiences have made me who I am and I know without them I would only be a fraction of the person I am now. Sometimes, when I feel sorry for myself, I wish none of it had ever happened, and that my life had been as it once was; that I’d kept my well paid job in London and drifted into middle age, childless and wealthy, with nothing but time and money on my hands…

But mostly I forget about it all…  I go about my day, and to the best of my ability appreciate what I have.  I take care of business… and only sometimes, when the sun is setting and evening casts its long and thoughtful shadows through the woods, do I remember such things, and wonder…   

When is #NOW a good time to start living?

If there’s one thing we can be damn sure of, it’s if we keep doing the same old things, we keep getting the same old things.

No good complaining life is monotonous and boring, if we don’t stick our necks out occasionally.  Easier said than done especially if we’re feeling tired and worn down, but then again perhaps that’s exactly the time when we should make the extra effort!  Monotony is renowned for bringing exhaustion in its wake… Too tired, too old, too bored.

What get’s us out of bed in the morning?  New stuff, that’s what. New things make us feel excited.  Children’s lives are full of excitement, because every day they find something new to be excited about.  As time passes (if we don’t keep our wits about us), we begin to get stuck.  We buy a house, we put our roots down, every day we make the same journey to work to do the same job with the same people, we come home again to the same routines… we turn on the telly, eat a sad and indigestible microwave meal, drink a bottle of wine and try to forget that this is all we have become.  We begin to settle.

Settle is what we expect others to do.  ‘At last he’s settled down!’ As if it were a good thing to no longer yearn for excitement and new experiences. ‘Settle’ is what water does when the flow begins to slow.  Sooner or later it stops altogether and the freshness goes, and then the water that was once full of light and sound and vitality, becomes stagnant.  It becomes poison.

This is what happens to us.

When we stop looking for new things, new experiences, new life, we start to atrophy.  Our life force begins to diminish because our disinterest in ‘what comes next’ proclaims to the universe we no longer have a desire to live. We begin to send out nothing but negativity…  Oh God, another day.

But not all follow the dead-end path.  I have two friends (they are twins) who are 77 years old.  I share this only because if you met them, you would never believe it.  I have never known anyone who has been anywhere on this planet they haven’t. Their entire lives have been spent living.  They never married and fell foul of convention. They’ve had no children – to their knowledge. They have always walked – or rather run – their own path, and it has been filled with fun, excitement, sadness, love, light and passion.  They tell me, they have no regrets – not one – because they have always done everything they felt the urge to do.  They say, when they die, they will be happy because they never wasted a single moment of the lives they’ve been given.

My journey has been very different.  I did get married.  I did buy a house.  I did travel the same route to work, and I did have children. I didn’t travel the world and taste its countless delights, I didn’t climb the heights a soul that knows it’s free can, I stayed at home instead… and ‘settled’.

But now, before it’s too late, I want something different from the convention and expectation I felt weighed so heavy.  Now my eyes and my heart are opening, and I can feel the flow inside of me.  I want to live.  I want to taste, and touch and smell and see and hear, and completely immerse myself in all good things this life is simply bursting to show me!

I see an door swinging open in front of me…  I think I will walk through – no!  I think I will run! 🙂

#Glasgow tower blocks and the impermanence of all

Watching the two second demolition of a Glasgow tower block, as it succumbed to the inevitability of its controlled explosive execution, carried far more emotion than I would have expected. A woman talking after the event reminded me that this was not for her, just an eyesore, or a pile of concrete cancer slowly decaying, it was a valuable part of her life.

People she knew and loved had lived in this stack of flats, piled one on top of the other in a mid-20th century attempt to provide accommodation at a time when the nation was bankrupt and there was no money for quality housing.  Within this high-rise concrete theatre, their stories entangled and threaded together making up an essential section of the fabric of time and space in this place.  The woman had lived there too with her parents who no longer live in this world, and all had worked together to create a unique energy that represented a path from which she, and others, had come. It was the source of her story.  For her, as the building gave itself up, the memories stored within the crumbling walls were released in a two second blast that shocked her – and it is no surprise.

Monuments, gravestones, buildings… all represent the past.  Old friends, old deeds and old actions we do not want to forget are tied up ‘forever’ in a form we believe holds permanence.  It gives us a sense of security – of knowing what went before.  Like anchors into the past we cherish the tug they give us when life rocks the boat.  We think we are safe having these ties to what has gone before.

But is this true?  Ties restrict.  Ties bind.  Ties are in direct opposition to freedom. Ties may feel like a safety net, but they are also what keeps us in chains.  What we think of as a permanence really carries no guarantees at all… nothing in this world is forever.  We may not want to believe it, but what we lash ourselves to is already changing, already falling away – everything is moving into and out of form in a constant dance, and if we are not free to join this dance we suffer and shuffle about instead, held back by the weight of memories of a past that no longer exists. 

Better to let it go.  Say goodbye and move on.  Holding on to old things means regret, resentment, sadness, melancholy, wistfulness, even anger.  There is nothing to be gained from living in the past.

With the falling of the tower block and the release of all the energy, perhaps the woman from Glasgow will find her life a little lighter now, perhaps she will dance a little more too – who knows?   

Cash under the Bed

My ex-husband used to keep money under the bed.  He would shove bundles of notes under the mattress at the end of each working day, and occasionally even pay some of it into the bank.  He earned a lot of cash.  It was the nature of his business. The Inland Revenue never got the full story of course, it would have cost them a fortune to follow him around day after day as he visited wealthy ladies with money, and time, on their hands.  Every morning he would be up and gone at daybreak – no mobile phones back then, so I would never hear a word from him until he came home in the evening, pockets full of cash and starving hungry. Where had he been?  Who had he seen?  I never knew.  

Was he a gigolo? I think you could say there were perks (for him) that came with the job, but by profession he was a farrier – a blacksmith who nailed iron shoes onto horses.  Perhaps that was the appeal for the ladies with the loot. Lonely Lady Whoever would seldom turn down an hour in the company of something so dark and dangerous.  There was always a kind of earthy sexuality to him.  Like a fox, he was always on the look out and rarely missed a chance. The women adored him.  They would fall at his feet.

It’s very odd being married to someone other women fancy so openly.  In the end it makes you feel almost invisible. One lady, whose red finger nails seemed to know the line of his back just a little too well, even came to babysit.  Now that took some nerve. I didn’t know it at the time, for I was naive and probably downright stupid, but she and he had been at it for years.   Later I felt quite sorry for her, because she, like all the others, fell out of favour in the end. To cap it all he stopped shoeing her horses as well.

Of course someone like this doesn’t actually care for anyone.  How can they?  If you move from one person to another, without forming any personal attachment, you cannot possibly feel love or compassion for your fellow human beings.  If you did, you wouldn’t want to use them in such a callous way, or ever inflict more hurt.  To carry on behaving in this way year after year would surely be impossible for someone who had an ounce of kindness.  Not for him. He never looked back.  He had the unique ability of being able to erase unwanted people and thoughts from his mind.  They simply no longer existed.  He had no apparent guilt.  At age 14 he got a girl pregnant, and when confronted by the distraught father, merely shrugged and said ‘It’s not my problem mate – I’m going to football!’  Years later, when he told this story, he would chuckle.  It was one of his favourites.

So what happened to jack-the-lad?  He with the dark and swarthy looks and muscles to match…  What happened to the man with the eyes of a snake and the habits of a libertine? What happened to the grand seducer who never had to try too hard?

Well… For one thing he got old!  (Pause for smirk…)  

Like for all of us, time ticks away and takes away our youth and our vitality.

Not so much cash under the bed these days I’ll be bound.

Bees, Measles and the right to Live

It’s hard not to be cynical.  Let’s face it, anyone with half a brain knows that pharmaceutical and chemical companies are not in the business of putting themselves out of business.  With billions of dollars in profits every year, why would they ever contemplate confirming that something bringing in the big bucks now could be dangerous in the long term. That kind of thinking isn’t going to pay dividends and keep the Board of Directors in designer suits.  Surely it’s not much of a quantum leap to imagine that at the end of the day, ‘they’ do not want a healthy world at all.

It seems it’s measles time again.  A disease that my generation coped with rather well – and survived.  To be honest it never seemed that much of a deal.   ‘Where’s Sarah today? ‘  ‘She’s at home with the measles’ ‘Oh.’   My own daughter caught it when she was 5 and sure enough she was pretty groggy for a day or two, it wasn’t pleasant and she was miserable, but within a week she was up and about same as usual – and she a cancer survivor.

A government adviser here in the UK is suggesting children in the private school system are a threat to children at large.  It seems their rebellious ‘middle class’ parents have not had them vaccinated.  He even suggests the schools in question should put pressure on these parents to jab their children.  It seems it’s all about the greater good.

Since these so-called ‘middle class’ parents have made a conscious, informed decision not to vaccinate their children, then that must be their choice.  At the moment, we still live in a free country…  don’t we?  To suggest that parents should be forced to contaminate their children’s bodies against their wishes seems one short step away from a paradigm shift towards global dictatorship.  God forbid we should find out in years to come that someone was taking backhanders from a pharmaceutical company.  Outrageous!  Such a thing would never happen…

It has also been suggested that vaccinations aren’t all they are cracked up to be anyway.  It seems their introduction coincided with a widespread understanding about personal hygiene – people started to wash their hands.  Many diseases were on the decline at this time simply because of this. If vaccinations are the holy grail and the answer to our human ills, one wonders how mankind has evolved so far without them.

No one wants to die – but guess what?  We all do.  Nothing and no one who has ever walked on this planet has dodged the inevitable.  It’s just a matter of time.

So while we are here, what shall we do with this life?  Shall we live it terrified at every turn, too scared to step out of the well established, profit creating, parameters laid down by authorities, governments and big business?  Shall we lie down and whimper in fear as something else gets forced upon us, because we do not know how to be responsible for ourselves and say ‘No’?

This week we are watching as our government plays environmental Russian roulette once again.  They are considering NOT banning pesticides that are scientifically proven to be devastating our bee populations.  Why would they do that?  Once again, a government adviser is saying that it would be a disaster to ban them. He says it would impact severely on crop production.  He seems to be blind to anything else.  One could say he was extraordinarily focused on the continued sale and use of these products.  God forbid in years to come someone might be found to have been receiving backhanders from a chemical giant.  Outrageous!  Such a thing would never happen…

Are you fed up with being told what to think and what to do?  I am.  The only person who knows me, is me.  I am tired of being frightened into thinking my body has something wrong with it.  How dare they invade my home and my mind with their poison.  They would say it was helpful –  they would say they are talking about prevention – but they are not. They are spinning a web of fear that paralyses, and ensures profits and control stay exactly where they are – with the tiny proportion of the population that controls over 90% of the global wealth.

There are good people out there, of course there are – good, kind and well meaning people who are doing their very best with what they have and what they know.  But is it always for the best? One size, one pesticide and one vaccination doesn’t fit all.  In the end we have to take responsibility for ourselves.  Each one of us lives and dies here on planet earth, and whether we like it or not, we are always by ourselves.  Fundamentally we are alone.  Running away from ourselves means a life of suffering.  We have to come face to face with that reality sooner or later.  In the end it is how we live this life between birth and death that really matters – how do we want to leave this Earth?  A healthy place, a happy place, a thriving place?  Or one that is consumed by lies built on nothing more than profits and losses…

We all die… but before we go, do we all live?

And so to bed

Starting with a migraine aura on Tuesday (such pretty, vibrant, twirling colours before my eyes!) and having, once again, been clobbered by a ‘virus’ in the last 24 hours, I find myself back in bed. I don’t mind – well, I do, but I also know how to make the best of it.  I can write without feeling guilty, I can sleep if I want, and apart from cold sweats, coughing fits and copious nose blowing, I don’t feel too bad.  I was going to London for a few days, but that is off the schedule… no outings for me at the moment – not even a dog walk – I think I would fall in a ditch and never be found.  My dog would leave me in a heartbeat in favour of his dinner. There is a full moon tonight with a Lunar Eclipse, and it is also Lunar Beltane, so as far as I know there is a LOT of cosmic activity out there.  Stuff… is moving.

Perhaps that is why I am confined to barracks.  I seem to be very sensitive to such things these days.  There is a certain logic in the assumption that what goes on ‘out there’ also goes on ‘in here’ – as above, so below etc. So it stands to reason, if the heavens are readjusting, so might we. 

There has been a lot around ‘anger’ of late.  My anger, and other people’s anger.  For decades I would tell anyone who listened that I was not in possession of anger.  “I don’t have any!” I would say with a smile “I am even tempered, and never get cross”  What an angel…

This, of course, was always a lie.  I am human, and humans get angry.  It is what we do along with joy, sadness and all the other emotions that make us whole.  It is what we do with the anger than matters.  Healthy expression of anger is normal.  “I am feeling angry, right now! I need to go and punch a pillow!”  So do that. “I need to shout!” So go out in the car and do that.  Violence is not anger – it is uncontrollable rage, often brought about by childhood abuse.  A little child who has suffered in such a way, can grow into an adult whose rage bursts through and causes damage to themselves and others.  But there is also suppression of anger.  Nice people don’t get angry – except that they do.  They just suppress it instead.

Suppression sits on top of violence and rage, and is not healthy, so just like a simmering volcano, no one knows when it might erupt. Suppressed anger is dangerous, and people holding that find loving, genuine relationships difficult to maintain.  It is hard to trust a pressure cooker when the lid might blow at any second.

So we need to acknowledge our anger when it needs to find its voice.  We need to notice it and confirm it, and allow it to have safe and healthy expression.  

I have a feeling this is what my ‘virus’ is all about. I am feeling my anger in this unique way as it finds it’s way out. This is old anger, so old – never before expressed – this is the stuff that has been held for decades under the lid of suppression.  It is not all shouting and screaming… it is simply a lower vibration I do not need to hold on to. Once it is gone, I know I will acknowledge anger as it comes in my now moments.  If something or someone annoys me, I will express it.  ‘I am feeling angry right now’.  This doesn’t hurt anyone, it just allows the anger to move. 

In my bed I am not angry because I don’t have to see anyone or do anything – it is the perfect time to deal with matters thus far unexpressed.

Sleep calls.