Lost

I have lost a friend. Painfully. Strangely. Something got a bit messy between us, and I expressed concern and have now been shut out entirely, like a cold steel shutter coming down in front of a shop, with that sharp rattle and crash, then locked into place. Of course that is a very short version of a very long story, but I am feeling the loss and the rejection today. It's not the fact that something could go wrong in a friendship that hurts, it's her total lack of interest, curiosity or concern to hear or try to understand my point of view, my feelings. The apparent loss of any feeling about it, about me.

Fear Of Falling

Snow. Ice. Eye watering wind. Dazzling low sunlight. The fear of falling. The joy of woolly hats, mittens, cowls and snoods! Five weeks until Christmas. Flowers in a vase on the table, given to me by my colleagues when we parted on Wednesday, and a box of chocolates, only one or two remaining now. Leaving there, having handed over my keys, and collected the toys and figures that were mine - witch, wizard and dragon, incredible hulk, and lots of animals, wooden buildings and superheroes, I suddenly did not belong. Sitting drinking tea with four colleagues, I felt part of something, included. Walking across the road and getting into my car, driving home and bringing inside the flowers, chocolates, the figures, and all the shopping I'd bought on the way, I was no longer included, no longer belonged. Such an abrupt transition. I fell into the dark for a while.

There is a very small girl in me who is unable to hold the relativity of these kinds of changes and transitions, who interprets endings as 'the end' and a real threat to her well-being and ongoing sense of coherent self. She is frightened, she panics and despairs. It's my job to help her with that. I'm not saying all the pain and loss are in the past - there is present pain, loss and disappointment as well as anger and confusion about this job. But my competent adult self knows she can manage these, and that life will always bring another day, another change in the light, another beginning, another job. Until the final change, of course, and then there will always be someone else whose lot is to live through the endless change that is human existence.

Out

So, a job interview on Thursday, and on Friday the news I hadn't got it. Deflating after working with the team one day a week for the last four months. On the other hand this job was not truly the greatest fit for my skills and style. But I liked my manager, the building, the team, and the short commute. Struggling in the aftermath with a feeling of falling back into the void - what now? Now not even the one day a week. It's been / being such a trudge back into capacity, into resilience and confidence after the blows of the last 23 months. Yes, in a month it will be two years since G was murdered. Incredible. I have stopped carrying the two stones she gave me everywhere every day (just some days, some places). Driving to the interview on Thursday, I heard her whisper 'you can do this P'. And I did, but someone else pipped me to the post, and this is life...

I fall so easily into despair, and this is what we were talking about when she vanished. Doom, catastrophe and hopelessness. And yet, only a couple of weeks ago I had rediscovered some joy in living, and the other day I actually did some writing! Leave it with me, I'll find my way out of the despair...

Don't Breathe Out

Still

Still here, though quiet. Words are difficult, or have been. I've started a drawing class to see if marks come easier. A wonderful walk today in glorious October sunshine with L whose birthday is on Sunday, and this some of the celebration. Many changes unfolding and I am sure there will be words again.

Harvest

I have distinctly felt the first touch of autumn these last two days. Heavy rain chased away the warmer air, and now the sun is back, but we're into another phase.

A vase of flowers from the garden - the first sweet peas (at last), one white, one dark red, frothy alchemilla, a lovely mallow with darker purple veins on its pale lilac petals, penstemon, veronica, spikey petalled astrantia, and something with small dark red flowers I think is a godetia. They are all together in an old milk bottle marked Hornby & Clarke, which L dug up in our London garden years ago.

Still eating gooseberries, dark as plums, tender broad beans, sweet tasting 'early' potatoes whose skins insist on floating off as they cook, nutty flavoured bristly courgettes, strawberries, raspberries, lettuce and mizuna. The runner beans are flowering scarlet on the allotment as they scramble up their hazel wigwam. And we have seedlings of rocket and chard growing on in the cold frame for later crops.

Summer

This summer is rather hard to love. A blanket of cloud of varying colour and density keeps the sun from warming and brightening our days almost every day. Just occasionally, the cloud disperses, the sun shines and the air begins to warm, we sit ourselves outside, apply sun cream, remember what we thought summer was originally intended to mean. These occasions last sometimes more than half a day...

My mother used to struggle with the way weather affected her mood, and be vociferously indignant when it was ghastly! Lowering (pronounced louring) was a word she often used to describe just such skies as we have seen rather too much of this summer. Definitions include dark and threatening, and I think it was some kind of threat that my mother used to sense, or you might say project into these heavy dull skies. And I have become more like her as I have grown older, even as I have deepened my understanding of the early roots of the feeling that is triggered. For me the departure of brightness, the absence of the sun and its warmth, create a perfect sensory metaphor for abandonment, loss, separation, ending. The mood that can seize me - a depressive one, if you will - is one in which all goodness has departed, the best is past, and now only bleakness and doom remain. I try to think of it as theatre lighting, to consider the skill used by its technicians to create mood and meaning by adjustments to the angle, brightness, colour or tint of the onstage lighting. I try to find the place inside me where I feel well, supported and know that I have not been abandoned. Hard work.

Today I have taken garden waste, cardboard and empty cartons to the tip, been to Lidl to buy amongst other things 70% dark chocolate with small caramel chips in it, goats cheese, nectarines and a little basket of single clove garlic. I learned that they do not sell fresh ginger. So I bought some from The Bear, a rather fine wholefood shop nearby, as well as some ground ginger, some fine wholewheat flour and some blackcurrant and apple concentrate. Sliced fresh ginger infused in boiling water is my favourite afternoon beverage and very good for the digestion. Good news to report, since we're on the subject - my gut doing very much better and I think I've put on a pound or so! Certainly eating a whole lot more these last few weeks, and able to enjoy the raspberries, strawberries, blackcurrants and gooseberries we have been growing in abundance in garden and allotment. We made ten jars of gooseberry jam at the weekend!

So, yes, summer is still performing some of its expected miracles!