Tunnel

The dreaded day approaches. Daffodils on the table gainsay the impending ending, as they did 24 years ago and every year since. For many years I couldn't bear the sight of them. And every year at this time there's this awful alternation between days with spring woven through them, new light, new warmth, more and louder birdsong, birds with things in their beaks; and days of terminal bleakness like today, when the sun is not even close to showing its face, my feet are cold, it drizzles all day, the sky is pale grey and sullen, everything screams ending and dying and the abandoning of hope. I am always shocked on the late February days that speak of spring, that this was the time when he did it. Now, just when hope seems to be returning. And then there's a day like today...

And today I weep, and today I know the lure, the magnetism of the day and those that lead me towards it, the twenty-somethings of February, of the path into the darkness, from which there is no returning. The lure of being close to my father, of trying to follow him there, to find a kind of video playback inside my mind of the inside of his mind on that morning. But I am not not not going to follow him there, on his last journey, and although I don't believe in anything in particular after death, as all I know is that I don't know, I find I can draw a shred of comfort from the idea (thankyou G) he might in some sense be here beside me, and want to help me continue to find the way not to go there. Help me find ways it could get easier (as over the years it has, except on days like today).

Killing yourself is a long-term project, even when no-one knows you're engaged in it. It doesn't just happen on the day the trigger is pulled, the blade wielded, the pills swallowed, the platform jumped off. There are so many small ways to kill yourself day on day, to silence your anger, swallow your hurt, squash your protest, override your instincts. Year on year. Decade after decade. So many ways then to feel dead, leaden, empty, hopeless, exhausted. Until only food and drink and sleep seem to bring any comfort, any relief, and even the tiniest hurt becomes a weeping sore, and no-one knows how much pain you are in and how alone you are, and you can't tell them, and eventually it is not to be borne, and becoming the instrument of your own end appears logical, and humane. Inevitable. That's how far I can follow. A book I read when researching my dissertation on suicide and self-destructive behaviour talked about mistaking a tunnel for a stope (a horizontal working in a mine - in other words a tunnel with only one end). Always, I must always remember that when I am in the darkness I am in a tunnel, and there is always light to be found (eventually) at the other end. Some tunnels are long, though.

Door Open

Sitting here with the door open. Forecast said 13C and it feels like it.

I just had an email from A. He got a first for his first big essay on the Masters course and I am proud.

Today

The rain is a cold wet blessing up here in the north. All the mosses on the moors have chosen today to begin their spring growth, or maybe it's just that I have chosen today to notice the soft bright green garlands which suddenly adorn the bilberry bushes, the little red spikes emerging among the lower growing fuzzy moss.

I also feel blessed in my brother and my sister. My family and my friends.

Casserole

Cooking a big beef casserole this afternoon for a family congregation tomorrow, with celery, parsnips, carrots, swede and butternut squash, and a winter fruit salad with orange juice, lemon zest, honey and brandy. Murk rolls in over the tops and it's wet and darker at just gone five than of late. I think the weekend will feature a lot of sitting by the wood burner. Though yesterday in Manchester I actually ate my lunch sitting in the sunshine outside the wonderful Barbakan Deli. L is cleaning boots and shoes. An old friend phoned, who went on a 19-day silent retreat at Christmas, and sounds calm and happy. Tomorrow I have to get up at 6.00 to go and teach my students about professionalism (!) and when I get home around lunchtime, my brother will be here, having flown in early with his partner. Later my sister will arrive on the train.

Season

Stone walls still covered in a shiny ice glaze, the effect reminiscent of the vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts we buy at Christmas. Drops of frozen rain in trees and bushes, the third day now, like congealed tears. Icicles on the gate and bird box.

A vase of daffodils on the table. First of the season.

Glazed

Freezing rain coats everything with a slick layer of ice, like the sugar shell of a smartie.

Slowly Slowly Catchy Monkey

Strange to return from the stone-gathering mission, feeling a little raw and shy here. The daily stone-writing practice was a joy and a revelation. An exercise in mindfulness, a retuning of my poet's eye, I found it made January slow down, or made me more present to January. There were usually many stones on any given day, which, like a beachcomber, I sat down and sorted through at the end of the day. Poetic licence there, but sometimes there was more than one, and it was fun choosing. Other days I was stuck for even one. Usually on especially busy days, when I had rushed past them, or forgotten them in the clutter of content. L sometimes suggested something, but only once did that work. They had to be my own. So, great gratitude for this lovely practice. It's also nice to stop, and have the opportunity to explore other forms here again. But I shall always know that a stone is a possibility. What seems so small and unimportant becomes, when singled out, resonant, poignant, a marker along the way as the days and weeks go by.

I have my third cold since December. This is most unlike me. I have taken a sicky from my teaching job today, and postponed a visit to my mother's this weekend. Snow forecast tomorrow was also worrying her, and certainly the sub zero conditions don't make travel an appealing prospect, even train travel. I am, predictably, sitting at home with the wood burner. Less predictably perhaps, listening to Nick Drake. L is out for drinks with friends, which I've cried off. I rather like this feeling I get when I opt out of planned activity through illness (minor), and can just be cosy and quiet, a little outside of my life. And my life has suddenly become much busier, so I need some respite. Work has begun to develop and grow, and I am finding more confidence, resilience and enjoyment in it, especially the work with young people. Troubled though they are, and sometimes challenging, they have a freshness of vision, and a lack of defensiveness (compared with adults) which is refreshing, disarming, deeply moving sometimes.

I am solvent and feeling good about myself. Amazing to place those eight words in the box. Two years ago we moved up here just beneath the moors, in the snow, and for a long time after that I felt as if neither of those things would be possible ever again. Hard to take the long view when you're in crisis or its aftermath, trauma and its devastating after-effects.

(There goes the gritter!) 

I have stopped, and I mean stopped a constant inner narrative of self-criticism, self-doubt, self-blame. Replaced it, by and large (yes, there's slippage, of course), with a kind and gentle one of encouragement and reassurance. How I've done it is a kind of mystery, a kind of grace, but let's just say I've been stalking this particular prey for a long long time.